The moment Mr.Dillon sat down, Mr.Chamberlain was on his feet.

He worked up to the situation with some skill; but, after all, with that overdone passion which, as I have already said, spoils some of his greatest effects--he did not expose the mistake in his first few sentences.

He worked up the agony, so to speak.

First he recalled to the Liberals--whose hatred to him he feels and returns with interest--the fact that they had cheered Mr.Dillon's allusion to the effect Mitchelstown had had on him in provoking the violence of his speech.

And then when he had created his situation, he pounced down on the House with the climax--the speech had been delivered in 1886, the Mitchelstown tragedy had taken place in the following year.