Sir William Harcourt declared that they had not dropped Tome-rule;
that they had dropped nothing, and intended to drop nothing ; that they stood by the Newcastle programme ; but the question on which he enlarged as the very mainspring of the political watch was the question of how to get rid of the anomaly by which a non-representative assembly controls the action of the majority of the representatives of the people. Apparently the House of Lords question, like the serpent which sprang from Aaron's rod, swallows up all the other questions by which the Liberal party are embarrassed. Mr. Morley said a few emphatic words about the devotion of the party to Home-rule, and, except a sanguine hope of Sir William Har- court's (already falsified), that the Supplementary Estimates might be taken on Wednesday, nothing else of real importance happened. The meeting was sanguine ; but the meeting reckoned without Mr. Labouchere and the Irish party, who abstained from attendance.
