One could see that in the Liberal ranks there had succeeded to the fierce fighting spirit of the previous days a certain lassitude and disappointment.

What their faces told in the House their lips more freely uttered in the lobbies.

For a time, indeed, there was a feeling of almost unreasoning despair, and that full, frank, unsparing criticism to which every Government is subject from its friends when the winds blow and the waves are high.

It was said that the Government had committed the mistake of making too many targets at once; that they had first infuriated the Church by the Welsh Suspensory Bill; that they had followed this up by infuriating the publicans and the brewers by the Veto Bill; that, meantime, there was very little chance of their being able to obtain the compensatory advantage of getting these Bills passed into law.

There were grumblings about the Registration Bill; in short, nothing and nobody were spared in this hour of gloom and disaster.
[Sidenote: "Herr Schloss."] But the House of Commons--as I have often remarked--is like a barometer in the promptitude of its reflection of every momentary phase, and all these things are duly discounted by old Parliamentary hands accustomed to panics when a check comes to what has been a most successful campaign on the whole.