[Sidenote: Mr. Storey's contribution.]

At the same moment as Mr. Morton, Mr. Storey had risen from his seat,
and demanded the word. There is a flutter of expectation. On this speech
depended, at this moment, the fate of Home Rule and the Gladstone
Government. What will it say? Mr. Storey always takes a line of his own;
is a strong man with strong opinions, plenty of courage, not altogether
free from the tendency of original natures, to break away from the
mechanical uniformity of party discipline. Moreover, he is the chief
among that sturdy little knot of Radicals below the gangway who are
determined to make the Liberal coach go faster than the jog-trot of mere
officialism. Will he call upon his friends to stand by the Government or
to desert them--it is a most pregnant question.

It is not easy, in the midst of cyclones, to collect one's thoughts--to
choose one's words--to hit straight home with short, emphatic blow. But
this feat Mr. Storey accomplished. I have never heard, in my thirteen
years' experience of the House of Commons, a speech more admirable in
form. Not a word too much, and every sentence linked tight to the
other--reasoning, cogent, unanswerable, resistless. And the point above
all other things laid bare--are you Liberals going to help the Tories to
postpone, if not finally overthrow Home Rule, or are you not? This, it
will be seen, is but the emphasizing of the lead already given by the
maladroit speech of Mr. Goschen. But Mr. Storey, clear, resonant,
resolute, speaks to a House that listens with the stillness of great
situations. Every word tells. The issue is understood and knit; and now
let us troop into the lobbies, and proclaim to the world either our
abject unfitness to govern an empire and pass a real statute, or let us
stand by our great mission and mighty leader.