Mr. Balfour made an amusing and very confident speech to
-the United Club, in St. James's Hall, on Wednesday. He said that never in the whole history of our Parliament had such a tremendous strain been put on the Members of the House of Commons as during this Session, and never had the strain been more vigorously borne. As for obstruction, there had been positively no sort of obstruction. For example, only this week one comparatively unimportant clause, which excited no strong party feeling, the speeches being chiefly short speeches by Irish Nationalist Members, took up two whole days ; and on Thursday there were left only four hours for the discussion of eight or nine more clauses. No one who had been in the House of Commons could pretend for a moment that this most important and revolutionary measure had been obstructed, or had had even a reasonable proportion of Parliamentary attention devoted to it. As for the Anti- Parnellite Party, they had ventured to vote for amendments representing what they desired and believed in, only when they were quite sure that they were going to be unsuc- cessful, for otherwise they would have defeated the Govern- ment, and then all their hopes would have been extinguished. The Government were like a financial company trading on too small a capital, and had borrowed help 'from every quarter. Directly their supporters pressed them to discharge the debts for which they had given security, they would collapse ; and Mr. Balfour is very sanguine indeed that that collapse is at hand.
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