And, secondly, he was conscious that the majority of the House of Commons was growing very restive under the desperate obstruction of which he had made himself the champion, and that this feeling might soon become strong enough to carry Mr.Gladstone and the Ministers off their feet, and compel drastic measures which had hitherto been steadily refrained from.

This would not suit the book of Joe at all, whose object it was to keep the struggle going as long as he possibly could manage it, careless of the traditions of Parliament, of the dignity and decency of the House of Commons, of the life and strength of Mr.Gladstone, of everything except his own greedy desire for personal revenge and triumph.
[Sidenote: Mr.Gladstone's gentleness.] This was what lay behind the plausible and honeyed words in which Mr.
Chamberlain attacked the article in the _Daily News_.

And here a curious difficulty arose which rather helped Joe, and almost enabled him to score a great triumph.

Everybody knows that between the temper of Mr.
Gladstone and that of his friends and supporters there is an impassable gulf.

That mastery of a vulnerable temper, which accounted for many of the troubles of his earlier political career, which he himself has acknowledged in many a pathetic passage in his correspondence--that mastery of the vulnerable temper is now so complete that the Old Man glides through scenes of insult and passes over what the humblest member of the House would often find it hard to endure.