when he sits down, is there any human being that feels a bit the wiser or the better for what he has said?  And who can get over the idea that it has all been a bit of clever special pleading—­such as one could hear in half-a-dozen courts of law any day of the week?  And, finally, who is there that can help feeling throughout all the speech that this is a selfish nature—­full of venom, ambition, and passion—­seeing in political conflict not great principles to advance—­holy causes to defend—­happiness to extend—­but so many enemies’ faces to grind to dust?

Mr. Morley is a fine platform speaker, but as yet he is not nearly as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain.  He stumbles, hesitates, finds it hard often to get the exact word he wants.  And yet who cannot listen to him for ten minutes without a sense of a great mind—­and what to me is better, a fine character behind it all?  This man has thought out—­possibly in travail of spirit—­and his creed—­though it may not be the exultant cheerfulness of natures richer in muscle than in thought—­is one for which he will fight and sacrifice, and not yield.  In short, the thinness of Mr. Chamberlain—­the depths of Mr. Morley—­these are the things which one will learn from hearing them speak even once.

I have said that Mr. Morley is not as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain; but if Mr. Chamberlain be wise, he will call his watch-dogs off Mr. Morley, for he is being badgered into an excellent debater.  Every night he improves in his answers to questions.  Tersely, frigidly—­though there is the undercurrent of scorn and sacred passion in most of what he says—­Mr. Morley meets the taunts and charges of the Russells, and the Macartneys, and the Carsons, and never yet has he been beaten in one of those hand-to-hand fights.

[Sidenote:  Flagrant obstruction.]

There was a curious but instructive little scene towards the end of a sitting early in March.  The Tories—­headed by Jimmy Lowther—­had been obstructing in the most shameless way for a whole afternoon.  Towards the end of the evening Mr. Chamberlain had come down and joined in the fray—­lending his authority to tactics which usually had been left to the rag-tag and bobtail of all parties.  As I have already said, this kind of intervention had seriously diminished Mr. Chamberlain in the respect of the House.  And the way in which he did his work was venomous as well as petty.  The vote under discussion was a Supplemental Estimate for Light Railways in Ireland.  Everybody knows that light railways were the policy of the late and not of the present Government.  A supplemental estimate means simply a smaller sum by which the original estimate has been exceeded.  It ought to have been a matter of course that this supplementary estimate should have been agreed to by the Tories, seeing that it was money necessary to carry out the programme passed by their own friends in the previous administration.  But the Tories were in no humour to listen to such trifles as these, and carried on lengthy discussions.  Mr. Morley, having no responsibility for the policy which rendered such a vote necessary, was away in his room, attending to the duties of his laborious department.  Mr. T.W.  Russell assumed to be in a great pucker over this absence, and actually tried to stop the proceedings until Mr. Morley came back.