The debate was resumed on Thursday by Mr. Chamberlain in
a very powerful speech, which there was more than one discreditable attempt to suppress altogether. He showed/ how singular was the situation in which the country was about to be placed, by a defeat which would hand over the country to new Ministers, of whose intentions we have had no account, and on whose actions we can pass no effective criti- cisms for five or six months to come. Supposing the proposal of evacuating Egypt were really to be taken up by the new Ministry, we might very well find, at the opening of the next Session, that Mr. Gladstone, instead of being, like the present Government, in a minority of 40, would be in a minority of 100, though he had been left for months to initiate undisturbed the policy which placed him in that minority of 100. Mr, Chamberlain remarked, as we have remarked, on the strange silence of the Welsh representatives and the Labour repre- sentatives, and the English Home-rulers who insist on main- taining an effective supervision over the legislation of the Irish Parliament and the acts of the Irish Administration, and he- made some very effective criticisms on the extraordinary divergence between Mr. Labouchere's counsels and the counsels of the Prime Minister with whom it is supposed that he is going to co-operate. But he elicited no reply, nor did, Sir Henry James, who made a brilliant speech of the same tenor, nor did Mr. Chaplin. The debate closed, after no. voice but Mr. Gladstone's had been heard from the front Opposition Bench.
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