in debate it is sure to hear something which up to that moment has not been spoken. John Morley, therefore, very soon became one of that small body of men in the House of Commons whose rising to speak is always regarded as an event of interest and importance. In the retrospect of John Morley's career one is brought up with something approaching to a shock of surprise when he remembers that at the opening of Morley's Parliamentary life he was closely associated with Joseph Chamberlain. I remember having heard people say at the time that Chamberlain took much credit to himself on the ground that he had urged and prevailed upon John Morley to persevere in seeking a seat in the House of Commons. Mr. Chamberlain was at that time an extreme and uncompromising Radical. He was an avowed and constant supporter of the Home Rule party; was in close alliance with Parnell; took a leading part in the arrangement of the so-called Kilmainham Treaty, and delivered a warm panegyric on Parnell himself and Parnell's policy to a crowded and for the most part an indignant House of Commons. There was, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact that Morley and Chamberlain were at that time friends and allies in political affairs, nor had any one then the faintest reason to believe that Chamberlain was ever destined to undergo a sudden and miraculous conversion to ultra-Tory principles. When Mr. Gladstone came into office in 1886 with what was known to be a Home Rule administration, John Morley obtained the position of Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, with a seat in the Cabinet. It is not by any means a matter of course that the Irish Chief Secretary should be a Cabinet Minister. Sometimes the Lord-Lieutenant himself has a place in the Cabinet and the Chief Secretary is merely an ordinary member of the Government; sometimes, when the Chief Secretary is regarded as a very strong man, he is invited to a seat in the Cabinet and his official master remains outside. John Morley was recognized from the first by Gladstone as a man of the highest political capacity and character, and when the new administration came to be formed Gladstone made evident this estimate of Morley by offering him a place in the Cabinet. The keenest interest was felt alike both by political friends and political enemies in Morley's management of Irish affairs. The new Secretary for Ireland was entering bravely on an enterprise the immediate success of which was, under the conditions, absolutely impossible. I have no doubt whatever that success could have been easily and completely accomplished if John Morley had been allowed his own way in dealing with the whole Irish question--if, for instance, he had been placed in such a position of dictatorship as that which was given to Lord Durham when Durham was sent out to deal with the rebellion in Canada. Durham saw but one remedy for the long discontents and troubles of the Canadian populations, and