become a most effective weapon of Obstruction. But there was a certain
peculiarity about the questioning on this Thursday evening. A stranger
to the House would have remarked that all the questions addressed to Mr.
Gladstone were asked last. This was not an accidental arrangement. It
was done in the case of every leader of the House, so as to leave him
more time before coming down to the House of Commons. It was done in the
case of Mr. Balfour when he was leader of the House, with the result
that that very limp and leisurely gentleman never came down to his place
until the House had been one or two hours at work. There was, of course,
much stronger reason for that little bit of consideration in the case
of Mr. Gladstone, than in that of a young man like Mr. Balfour.

[Sidenote: The epoch of brutality.]

But the Tories, in the new and brutal mood to which they have worked
themselves up, have taken means for depriving Mr. Gladstone of what
small benefit he got from this postponement of the questions to him till
the end of question time. The puniest whipster of the Tory or the
Unionist party now is satisfied with nothing less, if you please, than
to have his questions addressed to and answered by Mr. Gladstone
himself. One of this impudent tribe is a Scotch Unionist named Cochrane.
The Scotch Unionist is one of the most bitter of the venomous tribe to
which he belongs. Mr. Gladstone is a man of peace and unfailing
courtesy, but the old lion has potentialities of Olympian wrath, and
when he is stirred up a little too much his patience gives way, and he
has a manner of shaking his mane and sweeping round with his tail which
is dangerous to his enemies and a delight and fascination to his
friends. He took up the witless and unhappy Cochrane, shook him, and
dropped him sprawling and mutilated, in about as limp a condition as the
late Lord Wolmer--I call him late in the sense of a person politically