To the House its entire character must have come as a surprise.

The mass of members that crowded every bench, and filled the vacancies which Ashmead Bartlett had made--Mr.Gladstone sitting attentive on the Treasury Bench--Mr.Balfour listening with evident friendliness and sympathy--all these were enough to transport any orator into the realms of high stirring rhetoric, and to attune the nerves to poetic and exalted flight.

But Davitt's nerves stood the test.

Slowly, deliberately, patiently, he developed a case for the Bill, of facts, figures, historical incident, pathetic and swift pictures of Irish desolation and suffering, which would have been worthy of a great advocate placing a heavy indictment.

Now and then there was the eloquence of finely chosen language--of a striking fact--even of a touching personal aside--but, as a whole, the speech was a simple, weighty, careful case against the Union--based on the eloquent statistics of diminished population, exiled millions, devastated homesteads.
[Sidenote: Tragic comedy.] There were plenty of lighter strains to relieve the deadly earnestness of a man who had thoroughly thought out his case.