The remarkable speeches of Thursday night were Mr. Gladstone's, Mr.
Asquith's, and Mr. Chamberlain's. Mr. Glad- stone, who was evidently incensed with Mr. W. H. Smith for the "bland" brevity with which he had pleaded for urgency, dilated at great length on the evidence of crime which he had thought it right to produce before he asked for urgency for Mr. Forster's Person and Property Protection Bill in 1881, and also dwelt on the yoke which the Closure seemed likely to impose, with a sympathy for individualism in Parliament which it is not easy, in the present state of public business, to discriminate from a tenderness for obstruction. He dilated at great length on the evidence elicited by Lord Cowper's Land Commission, and especially Sir Redvers Buller's, as to the over-renting of many of the farms, which nobody denies. He was indignant that the period of fifteen years for which the judicial rents were fixed, was not to be shortened, and so far as we can judge, he was at least equally indignant that the Irish leaseholders, whose con- tracts his own Government refused, in the main, to revise, were to have their contracts revised. Finally, he threatened a most pertinacious opposition to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill in every stage, in language which the Parnellite Members will certainly think a warrant for positive obstruction.
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