Mr. Asquith replied in an exceedingly clever speech, the whole
drift of which was to twit Mr. Chamberlain with Mr. Asquith replied in an exceedingly clever speech, the whole drift of which was to twit Mr. Chamberlain with having been the first, some years ago, to advocate the very measures of Welsh and Scotch Disestablishment, and to warn the House of Lords that they were "filling up the cup" of popular disapproval of their proceedings, for which he now reproaches the present Government. Mr. Asquith maintained, too, what we think it would be exceedingly hard to prove, that when once the Irish Home-rule Bill had passed the House of Commons, it had gained an enor- mous step in that popular esteem which means ultimate success. For our part, we wholly differ from him, and believe that Irish Home-rule has gone down in the world, not up, since the day when it was forced through the House of Commons by the use of the guillotine. Mr. Asquith con- cluded with the use of the one plea for which there is !some- thing to be said,—that the present House of Lords is perfectly unsuited for the purposes of restraining rash legis- lation, because it never stops really rash Conservative legislation, while it often stops Liberal legislation that is not rash. Doubtless ; but is that a reason for abolishing all checks on rash legislation, or only for making it competent to restrain all rash legislation, whether it emanates from a Conservative or from a Gladstonian Government P The only remaining speech of interest was Mr. Labotichere's, who described himself as an ass willing to serve his masters in ploughing the sands of the sea-shore, so long as they insisted on so very foolish and asinine a policy.
