The lion lashes out.
Time after time—again and again—in this form and in that—the Tories, young and old, experienced and senseless, rose to try and corner Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Frank Lockwood, examining a hostile witness in the divorce court, could not have been more persistent than the Lowthers, and the Cranbornes, and even Mr. Balfour. But he was equal to them all—met them man after man, question after question, and, though he had to be on his feet a score of times in the course of a few minutes, was always ready, firm, alert. How we enjoyed the whole splendid display—a brilliant intellect playing with all the ease of its brightest and best powers; but, after all, what a flood of holy rage the whole thing was calculated to rouse in any but rancorous breasts. However, we had our revenge. The resurgence of Jimmy Lowther seems to be a phenomenon, as disturbing to his friends as to his foes. The ugly necessity for sharing responsibility for his vulgar and senseless excesses has come home to Mr. Balfour. There was something very like a scene this night between him and the Newmarket steward. Mr. Balfour was ready to accept the assurances which had been given to him by Mr. Gladstone—assurances which, if anything, erred on the side of conciliation—but Jimmy has entered on the frenzied campaign of obstruction to all and everything which his dull, narrow, and obstinate mind has mistaken for high policy. This led to a strange and striking scene. Mr. Balfour, speaking on some question, was interrupted by Mr. Lowther—and then, in front of the whole House—in words which everybody could hear, with gesture of his whole arm—sweeping, indignant, irritated—the gesture with which a master dismisses an importunate servant—the Tory leader rebuked the interruptions of Mr. Lowther.
Jimmy flouts Mr. Balfour.
But Mr. Lowther, in these days, is not to be put down, and doubtless he feels in his inner breast that wrong which has been done for years to his talents and his services; doubtless he remembers the silence and obscurity to which he has been condemned, while Mr. Balfour has been figuring largely before the general public, in the very situation which Jimmy held himself in days when Mr. Balfour stumbled and trembled from his place below the gangway. At all events, Jimmy has determined to revive; and in these sad days, when nothing but the sheer brutality of obstruction is required, he is not a man to be trifled with. And so he defied Mr. Balfour and insisted on a division. Mr. Balfour ostentatiously left the House, but the majority of the Tory party followed Jimmy.
The pity of it.
All this resuscitation of obstruction necessitated, on Mr. Gladstone's part, an extreme step. Before this time Mr. Gladstone was very rarely in the House after eight o'clock. About that hour, he silently stole away and left the conduct of the business of the House to Sir William Harcourt. He was thus able to get to bed at a reasonable hour, and to attend during the day to the business of the nation. But when the emergency arises, Mr. Gladstone is never able to listen to the dictates of prudence, or selfishness, or peril. He was determined to show the Tories that if they were going to play the game of obstruction, they would have to count with him more seriously than they imagine. To his friends—who doubtless were aghast at the proposition—he announced that he was going to break through those rules which had been imposed upon him by a watchful physician and by his age. At eleven o'clock he announced he would be in the House again, and accordingly, at eleven o'clock—quietly, unostentatiously, without the welcome of a cheer—he almost stole to his place on the Treasury Bench. Something about the figure of Mr. Gladstone compels the concentration of attention upon him at all times. He seems the soul, the inspiration, the genius of the House of Commons. He was not, as is usually the case with him in the evening, in the swallow-tail and large shirt-front of evening dress; he had the long, black, frock coat, which he usually wears on the great occasions when he has a mighty speech to deliver. Of course, Mr. Gladstone was immediately the observed of every eye; but, as I have said, there was no demonstration—the House of Commons is often silent at its most sublime moments.
He pounces.
But if there were silence, it was simply pent-up rage, fierce resolve. When, having brought the discussion down to past midnight, the Tories calmly proposed that the debate should be adjourned, the Old Man got up. He was very quiet, spoke almost in whispered lowliness; but he was unmistakable. The vote would have to be taken. An hour later—when the clock pointed to one—there was a second attempt. There was the same response in the same tone—its quietness, however, fiercely accentuated by Liberal cheers. And then, when the Tories still seemed determined to obstruct, came a division, then the closure, and at one o'clock in the morning Mr. Gladstone was able to leave the House. Thus was he compelled to waste time and strength, that Mr. Chamberlain might nightly hiss his hate, and Mr. Jimmy Lowther might gulp and obstruct, obstruct and gulp.