is one of the many guileful methods of these crafty men who sit on front benches on both sides of the House.  Obstruction is a thing too horrible to be practised by any man who has ever held responsible position, and it is delightful to see how Mr. Balfour repudiates the very idea of anything of the kind.  It would, therefore, have suited Mr. Balfour a good deal better if Jimmy could have obstructed from some quarter of the House where his closeness of association would not so largely commit his more responsible colleagues to participation in his iniquities.  However, it was not to be managed; and the leaders of the Opposition are bound to put up with the closeness of Jimmy’s companionship.

[Sidenote:  Mr. Lowther’s intellect.]

Again I repeat, obstruction is a matter not of intellect, but temperament.  Intellectually, I should put Jimmy in a very low place, even in the ranks of the stupid party.  Temperamentally he stands very high.  A brief description of his methods of obstruction will bring this home.  First, it should be said that he is entirely inarticulate and, beyond rough common sense, destitute of ideas.  He has nothing to say, and he cannot say it.  There are men in the House of Commons who have plenty of thoughts, and who have plenty of words besides, and could branch out on any subject whatever into a dissertation which would command the interest even of political foes.  But Jimmy is not of this class.  He is capable, on the contrary, of bringing down the loftiest subject that ever moved human breasts to something stumbling, commonplace and prosaic.  When he gets up, then, his speech consists rather of a series of gulps than of articulate or intelligible statements.  But then mark the singular courage and audacity of the whole proceeding.  There are traditions still in the House of Commons of the marvellously stimulating effect upon followers of leaders, who were proverbial for their oratorical impotence.  Everybody remembers the scornful description of Castlereagh which Byron gave to the world; and yet it has been said in some memoirs that the moment Castlereagh stood up and adjusted his waistcoat, there was a thrill in the House of Commons, and his followers bellowed their exultation and delight.  In a more recent day, Lord Althorpe was able to bear down the hostility of some of the most powerful orators of his time by a bluff manliness which no rhetoric could withstand.  And so also with Jimmy—­his sheer audacity carries him along the slow, dull, inept, muddy tide of his inarticulate speech.

[Sidenote:  An irrepressible nuisance.]