The final debate on the Address was commenced by Mr.
Chamberlain yesterday week in a very masterly speech. He dwelt on the admission, and even contention, of Ministers, that Irish Home-rule was their "primary policy," and on the diff culty in which they had been placed by knowing that that primary policy had no majority behind it in the country. This discovery had led them to invent the secondary policy of a campaign against the House of 'Ards; and as that secondary policy also proved a failure, and elicited not a spark of enthusiasm, they had been driven to put forward a tertiary policy,—the policy of "filling up the cup,"—in other words, of aggravating the quarrel between the Government and the House of Lords, by promoting farther popular measures which the House of Commons would pass, but which it was hoped that the House of Lords would reject, and so improve the Ministerial chance of discrediting the House of Lords with the country. Mr. Chamberlain prefaced this argument with very impressive illustrations, and concluded from it that Ministers ought not to take up the time of Parliament in discussing measures which the Government themselves admit that they cannot pass, after they have launched on the country a pro- pose.: for a constitutional change of the greatest magnitude, on which the judgment of Parliament ought to be taken withow delay. To reserve such a thunderbolt for use as a pis-0111.7, is not treating Parliament with the proper respect.
