Perhaps not even Mr. Gladstone--certainly not Mr. Goschen--though he, too, is a past master in figures--is as formidable and destructive a gladiator in a fight over figures as Mr. Sexton; I pity any mortal who gets into grips with him on that arena. Mr. Chamberlain was the unhappy individual whom Mr. Sexton took in hand. Mr. Chamberlain has the reputation of being a good man of business, he certainly was a most successful one; and one would expect from him some power, at least, of being able to state figures correctly. When the figures he had presented to the country in a recent speech at Birmingham came under analysis by Mr. Sexton, Mr. Chamberlain was exposed as a bungler as stupid and dense as one could imagine. Mr. Chamberlain's mighty fabric of a war indemnity of millions which the financial arrangements of this Bill would inflict on England, melted before Mr. Sexton's examination--palpably, rapidly, exactly as though it were a gaudy palace of snow which the midsummer sun was melting into mere slush. The cocksureness of Mr. Chamberlain makes his exposure a sort of comfort and delight to the majority of the House; but still, the sense of his great powers--of his commanding position as a debater--of his formidableness as a political and Parliamentary enemy--made the House almost unwilling to realize that he could be taken up and reprimanded, and birched by anybody in the House with the completeness with which Mr. Sexton was performing the task. Mark you, there was nothing offensive--there was nothing even severe in the language of Mr. Sexton's attack. It was simply cold, pitiless, courteous but killing analysis--the kind of analysis which the hapless and fraudulent bankrupt has to endure when his castles in the air come to be examined under the cold scrutiny of the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court. [Sidenote: Johnston of Ballykilbeg.]