A great eirenicon.
The paper which contained the list of pairs for the night was crammed with the names of members from both sides, who, anticipating a debate of hours' duration, had wisely resolved to spend the interval between the motion and a division in the bosoms of their families—miles away from the floor of the House of Commons. The Whips had prepared their followers for a big division somewhere about midnight. And, lo! on all this vast and turbulent sea of conflicting waves the Prime Minister poured half an hour of oratorical oil, and the waters were stilled, and the great deep at perfect rest. In other words, Mr. Goschen threw away his notes; Labby advised Sir Charles Dilke not to go to a division; the debate had not begun and then it was over, and all that followed was addressed to a House empty of everybody. The Old Man—dexterous, calm, instinctive—had spoken the right word to meet every view, and there was nothing more for anybody to say. There is nobody else in the House who can do it; when his voice is stilled, the greatest of all Parliamentary secrets will die with him—the secret of saying the exact thing in the most difficult and embarrassing of situations. To the outside public, perhaps, this speech appeared nothing remarkable, and the allusions to it I have seen in the press have been few and perfunctory. You should hear House of Commons' opinion; you should listen to Unionists who hate him, to Tories who distrust him, to know what an estimate was formed of this marvellous speech by House of Commons' opinion.
The triumph of the miners.
On the Wednesday, again, Mr. Gladstone gave another example of his extraordinary dexterity. The miners had come down in full force to demand a legal eight hours. Sam Woods, of the Ince Division, on the one side, John Burns, of the Battersea Fields, on the other, frowned on the Old Man and bade him surrender. Behind him sat the great Princes of Industry—silent, but none the less militant, fierce, and minatory; opposite him was Lord Randolph Churchill, ready to raise the flag of Social Democracy and to wave it before the advancing masses against the Liberal party. Out of this difficulty, Mr. Gladstone rescued himself with all that perfect, that graceful ease which he most displays when situations are most critical. The debate was further made remarkable by a speech from Lord Randolph Churchill, who, amid the grim and ominous silence of the Tory Benches, thundered against Capital and Capitalists in tones for which Trafalgar Square or the Reformers' Tree would be the appropriate environment; and then came the remarkable division, with 279 for the Bill and 201 against.
Hull Again.
This was not the only victory which Labour was able to win in the course of this week. The House presented a very notable spectacle on May 4th. It was only by the aid of the Irish members, it is true, that Mr. Havelock Wilson was able to get the necessary forty to procure the adjournment of the House for the discussion of the Hull strike; but then, when Mr. Wilson was enabled to bring the subject before the House, he was listened to with an attention almost painful in its seriousness and gravity. Nothing, indeed, shows more plainly the vast social and political changes of our time, than this transformation in the attitude of the House of Commons towards labour questions. There was a time—even in our own memory—when such a question as the strike at Hull would have been promptly ruled out of order; and when the workmen who rose to call attention to it would have been coughed or even hooted down; and he would be certain to receive very rough treatment from the Tory party. The Tory party still remains the party of the monopolists and the selfish, but it has learned that household suffrage means a considerable weapon in the hands of working men, and, accordingly, though it may put its tongue in its cheek, it keeps that tongue very civil whenever it begins to utter opinion. To Mr. Wilson, then, the Tories, as well as the Liberals, listened with respectful and rapt attention as he made his complaint of employment of the military and naval forces of the Crown in—as he alleged—the buttressing of the case of the employers. And yet there was a something lacking. Mr. Asquith was able to show that he had done no more than he was compelled to do by the obligations of his office; and entirely repudiated any idea of allowing the forces of the Empire to be ranged on the one side or the other. Mr. Mundella was able to make a good defence of his officials against the charge which had been brought by Mr. Wilson. There was a good speech from John Burns, and it looked as if not another sympathetic word was going to be said for those starving men and women, who are making so heroic a fight for the right to live. Altogether, the situation was awkward and even distressing. The House, divided between the desire to remain neutral and to be sympathetic, was puzzled, constrained, and silent. It was at this moment that Mr. Lockwood made a most welcome and appropriate intervention. Gathering together the scattered and somewhat tangled threads of the debate, he put to Mr. Mundella several pertinent questions—among others, the very relevant one, whether or not the Shipping Federation had the right to employ sailors, whether they are not violating the law against "crimping" in so doing. Incidentally, Mr. Lockwood remarked, amid cheers from the Radical Benches—delighted at this opportunity of departing from its painful and embarrassed silence—that Liberal members had been returned to support the cause of labour, and that they ought to be true to their pledges. Mr. Gladstone at once grasped the situation with that unerring instinct which he has displayed so splendidly in the present Session, and at once undertook that the point raised by Mr. Lockwood should be considered; and so, with a word of sympathy and hope to the strikers, Mr. Gladstone rescued the House and himself from a painful situation.