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.
I have little doubt that he will be quite equal to any further steps which may be necessary to vindicate the authority of the majority in the House of Commons, and nobody doubts that such further steps may be necessary. The real and fundamental question--as I put it over and over again--is whether the Liberal party and the Liberal majority shall go before the country at the next election with the charge made good against them of lack of will, competence, and energy. If once that charge can be substantiated, I regard the Liberal cause as lost--and lost for many a year to come. Any Government almost is better than a Government which cannot govern; and the sentiment is so universal that I have no doubt the shifting ballast, which decides all elections, would go with a rush to the Tory side, and would enthrone in the place of power a strong Tory majority and an almost omnipotent Tory Government. The Tories know this, and calculate upon it, and will devote all their energies, therefore to reducing the present House of Commons and the present Ministry to discredited impotence, contemptible paralysis. Such a conspiracy must be met in the proper manner. Obstructive debate must be mercilessly closured; old rules must be abandoned without a sigh, and give way to others more adapted to the necessity of the time. Above all things the House of Lords must be flouted, humiliated, and defied. It is on the spring-tide of popular democratic and anti-aristocratic passion we shall have to float the next Liberal Government into power.