The Tories and the Unionists
would vote black was white, wrong was right. This way one moment, the
other way the next--they would do anything, provided only they could
turn the Government out, defeat the Bill, and humiliate the Old Man. And
so the situation grew more difficult every moment.
For it was now plain that the Government were most certain to be beaten,
and that if they were beaten, there must be an end of Home Rule. It
might be good Parliamentary tactics to say that the Government would
accept the decision of the House, but everybody knows what moral
authority, what reality of strength, there is in a Government which has
been "snowed under" by a majority of 200.
[Sidenote: Mr. Sexton makes the running.]
It will now be understood what tremendous issues rested on the speech
which Mr. Sexton rose to deliver. In moments of stress and difficulty he
is the man always selected by his colleagues to state the Irish case.
Never in his chequered and stormy early career did that wonderful
Parliamentarian have a task more difficult than that by which he was
now confronted. In front of him was the Government in the very panic of
impending ruin.
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