Dr. Playfair, in a very moderate speech, expounded at greater
length his original objection to the Industrial-School Clauses ; and Mr. Birley, the Conservative Member for Manchester, hinted that the Bill might be made stronger without danger. The whole discussion was unusually " practical,"—that is, petty, a discussion on details and not on the principle of the Bill—and when the debate was at length adjourned, no man of Cabinet rank on either side had spoken, and no representative of the Government had uttered a word. Mr. Fawcett commenting sharply on this, Mr. Disraeli intimated that the Government wished to gather the impres- sions of the House. And a very neutral set of impressions, little re- moved from brilliant " flashes of silence," he must have gathered. The Bill was not exactly " damned with faint praise," for the faintness of the blame of the Liberals was greatly due to the faintness of the praise of the Conservatives, so that the Bill was just kept head to wind by the slow revolutions of the opposite paddles, and it may so proceed languidly through the House.
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