To him, speaking was but a means to an end, and whether people listened to him or not--stopped to hang on his words or fled before his grating voice and Ulster accent--it was all one to him.
Two other men have the power of speaking always with the same interest and self-possession.

These are Sir Charles Dilke and Mr.O'Connor Power.
[Sidenote: The Sensitiveness of Mr.Balfour.] But Mr.Balfour is like none of these men.

He requires the glow of a good audience--of a cheering party--of the certainty of success in the division lobby--to bring out his best powers.

The splendid, rattling, self-confident debater of the coercion period now no longer exists, and Mr.Balfour has positively gone back to the clumsiness, stammering, and ineffectiveness of the pre-historic period of his life before he had taken up the Chief Secretaryship.

That was bad enough; but what is worse is that the House is beginning to feel it.