At an early hour in the evening there was a very significant question, and an equally significant answer.  Sir Charles Dilke called attention, with characteristic adroitness to a weapon which the Tories placed in our hands for dealing with such an emergency as that by which we were at the moment confronted.  It was Lord Salisbury who made the most excellent suggestion that when a Bill had gone through all its stages in one Session of Parliament it should not be necessary to repeat the process in the next, but that a mere resolution should bring the Bill once again into the fulness of life.  Would it not be possible for the Government, asked Sir Charles, to adopt the proposal with regard to their measures?  The answer of the Old Man was cautious, vague, and dilatory.  It is one of his well-known peculiarities not to arrive at the solution of a tactical difficulty one moment too soon; and this is a rule which, generally speaking, acts extremely well.  I dare say Sir Charles Dilke did not expect any other answer; and nobody in the House was surprised that the Old Man answered as he did.  But all the same, one could read between the lines, and it was pretty clear that the Old Man was preparing to face the situation by remedies drastic enough to meet even so revolutionary a situation.

[Sidenote:  A great Parliamentarian.]

Everybody was delighted—­that is to say, everybody on the Liberal side of the House—­to see that the great old leader was displaying on this question the same unerring tactics, the same resources the same willingness to learn, and the same elasticity of mind as he has manifested throughout his whole life—­or at least throughout all that part of it which dates from his escape from the shackles of his early and obscurantist creed.  He has never concealed the fact that he departed from the old rules of the House of Commons with misgiving reluctance, and even repulsion.  It would have been strange, indeed, if he could have felt otherwise after all his long years of glorious service in that august assembly.  But then, when the time did come for taking the plunge, he took it boldly and unshrinkingly.  It was a delight to watch him during this Session, and especially when it became necessary to use the guillotine against the revolutionary and iniquitous attempt to paralyse the House of Commons by sheer shameless obstruction.  The “guillotine” was a most serious, a most momentous, and even portentous departure from all precedent, except, of course, the Tory precedent of 1887; but the Old Man, when the proper time came, proposed the experiment with the utmost composure—­with that splendid command of nerve—­that lofty and dauntless courage—­that indifference to attack, which explains his extending hold over the imaginations and the hearts of men.

[Sidenote:  The plain duty of Liberals.]