6 MAY 1871, Page 2

Mr. Gladstone was rather lengthy on the technical side of

the proposal to suspend repayment of the Debt, and Mr. Disraeli hardly spoke so well as on Monday night. In the interim he had prepared a sobriquet for Mr. Stansfeld, whom lie called "that great master of sententious finance"; he taunted Mr. Gladstone with "becoming furious" when he was told that the 11. in the- pound proposed by Mr. Ward Hunt to meet the Abyssinian expe- dition was "a war-tax," and declared that his party was making a. fight both for sound finance and for the interests of the poor. So ended this rather tedious drama in two acts, of which the second was sadly like a repetition of the first, though ending with a. denouement a little less clear and satisfactory.