Lord Elcho, too, who insisted on speaking (literally at the
eleventh hour) on Thursday night just before Mr. Gladstone's reply, seemed to have at least as much desire to smile as to speak. He spoke about half-an-hour, and smiled, perhaps, the other half, while the Liberals were urging him to sit down. Lord Elcho had
the grand self-assurance to say that there had been a disposition ; on that side of the House,—he sits with the Liberals, though voting with the Conservatives,—to suppress discussion. Suppress discus- sion ! Why, no shadow of argument on either side had been urged less than as many times as there were speakers on that side during the debate, and Lord Elcho himself had nothing fresh to bring to the argument, except the "innumerable smile" on that sea of self-satisfaction, his handsome countenance, and some rambling story about an article in the Morning Chronicle of 1848, which, according to his account, represented the Peelites of that year more efficiently than the Day represented the Adullamites of 1867. If both the irrepressible story and the irrepressible smile had been repressed, we doubt if any one but Lord Elcho would have called it "suppressing discussion."
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