With the exception of Mr.Gladstone, Mr.Sexton is the one man in the House who is capable of such a feat.

This is largely due not merely to his oratorical powers but to the extraordinary range of his gifts.

To the outside public--even to the House of Commons--he is chiefly known by his great rhetorical gifts; but this is only a part, and a small part, of his great mental equipment.

His mastery over figures in its firmness of grasp, its lightning-like rapidity, its retentiveness, is almost as great as that of a professional calculator.
He has a judgment, cold, equable, far-seeing, and he has a humour that is kindly but can also be scorching, and that has sometimes been deadly enough to leave wounds that never healed.
[Sidenote: Mr.Chamberlain's arithmetic.] Perhaps not even Mr.Gladstone--certainly not Mr.Goschen--though he, too, is a past master in figures--is as formidable and destructive a gladiator in a fight over figures as Mr.Sexton; I pity any mortal who gets into grips with him on that arena.

Mr.Chamberlain was the unhappy individual whom Mr.Sexton took in hand.