[94] It was not possible that the Czar could have seen a telegraphic summary of Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall speech when he spoke to the nobles at Moscow.
[95] 160,000 men, and 648 guns.
[96] Sir S. Northcote spoke at Bristol on the 13th of November, and Mr. Cross at Birmingham a week later.
[97] It was at this time that Tory partisans and Ministerial organs, in order to encourage the Turks to resistance, began to denounce Lord Salisbury as a traitor.
[98] A fashionable skating-rink did poor business in 1876 if it did not return a profit of 300 per cent., and a good patent for a rinking-skate was worth at least £150,000 to a popular inventor.
[99] See Parliamentary Papers, Turkey (1877), No. 78.
[100] Even in 1877 some of the Tory squires were practising the old stupid method of obstruction, e.g., Mr. Orr Ewing and Sir William Anstruther put down 250 Amendments to the Scotch Roads and Bridges Bill—most of which, when not frivolous, were unpopular and reactionary. Such obstruction was, of course, easy to deal with.
[101] On the 26th of March the House got one of its earliest lessons in the new art of scientific obstruction. Mr. Parnell had, owing to the popular lines on which some of his amendments were drawn up, got about eighteen members at this time to act with him. But even they deserted him when, at one in the morning, Mr. Biggar moved to “report progress.” The division showed—Ayes, 10, Noes, 138. Mr. Biggar and his friends then kept up a series of see-saw motions—for adjournment and reporting progress, till at three in the morning Mr. Cross succumbed, and having struck his flag, assented to the rising of the House. Then Mr. Biggar and his friends pathetically wailed over the scandalous manner in which the House had had two hours of its valuable time wasted by the Home Secretary, whose surrender was cited as a justification of their opposition.
[102] This was fifteen minutes earlier than the hour at which it rose in the Debate on the Address in 1783. See Clayden’s England Under Lord Beaconsfield, p. 302.
[103] This was a popular move, for it was generally felt that Ireland not only had too many Judges, but that they were extravagantly overpaid.