Mr. Gladstone, after correcting Sir Stafford Northcote's cal- culations as
to the numbers of the proposed, the successful, and the abandoned measures of the Government, and insisting that, in spite of the difficulties of the Session, the legislative results were certainly above the average of the last fifty years, pointed out once more, as regards the Affirmation Bill, that the Governmenthad no choice but to submit to the House of Com- mons the only remedy which they could approve for the very unpleasant position in which the House was placed by its refusal to allow a regularly-elected Member of Parliament to take his seat in the manner prescribed by law. Mr. Gladstone spoke of the struggle between the House of Commons and the country "as a great and serious struggle, in which every man knows which party is finally to be the winner ;" and added, every man knows that the struggle will end "in the defeat of the vote which has been given." He pointed out that the loss of four nights on that debate proved how frightfully the measure of Parliamentary talk had increased since the time when the admission of the Jews to Parliament was settled in a single night. Mr. Gladstone insisted on the principle of Grand Committees as a success, and predicted that it was by the skilful use of this principle that the House of Commons would recover its legislative efficiency. He then fol-
lowed Sir Stafford Northcote into a review of the foreign policy of the Government, contending that though we are not without anxieties, we are far freer from anxieties than we were when the Conservative Government handed over the reins of office ; and concluded with a hearty eulogy on the policy of Lord Ripon in India, in spite of the unpopularity which one of his proposed measures has met with among Anglo-Indians in
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