At once it was seen what had taken place; the Tories, stung to action by the taunts of their own press, had concerted a new system of tactics.  And one portion of these tactics was to introduce into the House of Commons a phenomenon new to even its secular and varied experience—­namely, an organized claque.  It was really just as if one were in a French theatre.  Uniformly, regularly, with a certain mechanical and hollow effect underneath its bellowings, the group below the gangway uttered its war notes.  Beyond all question, recognizable by the unmistakable family features, it was there—­the organized theatrical claque on the floor of the British House of Commons.  There were other indications of the transformation on which the Tories were determined.  When Mr. Seton-Karr sate down after a palpably obstructive speech, Mr. Bartley got up, and several other Tories at the same time.  Mr. Bartley is not an attractive personality.  He has a very strong rather than pleasant or intellectual face.  There is plenty of bulldog tenacity in it—­plenty of animal courage, plenty of self-confidence; but it has none of the rays of a strong intelligence, and not many glimpses of kindliness or sweetness of nature.  It is in the work of obstruction that one sees temperament rather than intellect in the House of Commons.  Obstruction does not call for very high intellectual powers, though, undoubtedly, obstruction can at the same time display the highest powers.

[Sidenote:  Artists in obstruction.]

For instance, Mr. Sexton made his first reputation in the House of Commons by a speech three hours in duration, which was regarded by the majority as an intentional waste of time and an obstruction of a hateful Bill, but which everybody had to hear from the sheer force of its splendid reasoning, orderly arrangement of material, and now and then bursts of the best form of Parliamentary eloquence.  But the obstructionist wants, as a rule, strength of character rather than of oratory—­as witness the extraordinary work in obstruction done by the late Mr. Biggar, who, by nature, was one of the most inarticulate of men.  It was because Biggar had nerves of steel—­a courage that did not know the meaning of fear, and that remained calm in the midst of a cyclone of repugnance, hatred, and menace.  Mr. Bartley, then, has the character for the obstructive, and he rose blithely on the waves of the Parliamentary tempest.  But he had to face a continuous roar of interruption and hostility from the Irish benches—­those converted sinners who have abjured sack, and have become the most orderly and loyal, and steadfast of Ministerialist bulwarks.  And now and then when the roar of interruption became loud and almost deafening, there arose from the Tory bench below the gangway that strange new claque which on that Monday night I heard for the first time in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote:  Mr. James Lowther.]