this:  If the Government were defeated, it would be by a combination of different parties, but they would all agree in supporting 103 as against 80 Irish members; and if they did that, why the House was master.  This was ambiguous, and yet it was pretty plain.  The Government declined to accept as a vote of want of confidence in them a majority which was obtained by so dishonest and treacherous a combination as men voting together who were at such opposite poles of thought; and the Government would just checkmate the little game by accepting the 103 members as what the House preferred to the Government plan of 80.

[Sidenote:  The fall of the flag.]

There was a gleam of almost sardonic triumph in the Old Man’s eye as he sat down, having shot this bolt; and he looked as if he had thoroughly discomfited his enemies.  But his enemies were not so easily discomfited.  Treacherous, base, unscrupulous, call it what he liked, they were not going to miss the opportunity of baiting him:  and Mr. Chamberlain’s pale face wore a deadlier pallor.  There was even a colder and fiercer ring than usual in his clear, cruel voice; his always saturnine look deepened as he seemed to grasp beforehand his great and long delayed hour of vengeance.  Mr. Balfour adopted the same tactics.  In favour of 103 members?  Not at all—­the vote would mean nothing of that kind—­it would simply mean that they were opposed to the plan of the Government; in short, there was the issue quite plain.  The Tories and the Unionists would vote black was white, wrong was right.  This way one moment, the other way the next—­they would do anything, provided only they could turn the Government out, defeat the Bill, and humiliate the Old Man.  And so the situation grew more difficult every moment.

For it was now plain that the Government were most certain to be beaten, and that if they were beaten, there must be an end of Home Rule.  It might be good Parliamentary tactics to say that the Government would accept the decision of the House, but everybody knows what moral authority, what reality of strength, there is in a Government which has been “snowed under” by a majority of 200.

[Sidenote:  Mr. Sexton makes the running.]

It will now be understood what tremendous issues rested on the speech which Mr. Sexton rose to deliver.  In moments of stress and difficulty he is the man always selected by his colleagues to state the Irish case.  Never in his chequered and stormy early career did that wonderful Parliamentarian have a task more difficult than that by which he was now confronted.  In front of him was the Government in the very panic of impending ruin.  He had only to look across the floor of the House, and he could see the pallid face of that mighty statesman who lives so high in the hearts and affections of the people whom Mr. Sexton represents, and who at that moment was in his hour of agony, if not of final and irretrievable ruin.  Behind the Prime Minister were other men—­equally