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.
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