The chief subject-matter of Sir William Harcourt's political bounce on
Wednesday was, of course, the obstruction practised by the minority, and the claims made for the House of Lords.. He compared the majority in the House of Commons to a big boy, and the minority to a small boy (only smaller by a few inches), and asked what the country would have said if the-
big boy had complained that he could not get anything done because the small boy would not let him. He declared that it was quite true that the Government did hold themselves to be " commission agents" for carrying out the Newcastle pro- gramme, and were proud to be such commission agents. He was extremely angry with the Referendum doctrine, which he- denounced as perfectly unconstitutional, which may be true- enough if the Constitution be regarded as determined by the old conceptions of the Constitution in the times before the rule of the democracy began, but is certainly not true if the demo
cratic principle be considered as embodied in the Constitution, for not even Sir William Harcourt dare say that the Referen-
dum is not democratic. And he declared the intention of the
Government to take its own time, and adopt its own methods, for obtaining from the people of these realms their approval'
of what the Ministry have proposed ; and we have not the least doubt that they will be as good as their word,—and that, in spite of being as good as their word, they will not secure that approval. As to what Sir William Harcourt intends to do with the Lords if they persevere in their resistance to Mr.. Gladstone's policy, he kept a threatening silence, breaking off much as Neptune, in the first book of the " 2Eneid," breaks off his rebuke to the winds, with a " Quos ego," and a majestic indication of the wrath held in reserve for them.
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