Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/479

 T/ic Green Bag.

440

drop with monotonous and inexorable pre cision than run on in a continuous stream. The several stages of his speech are like steps cut out of ice, as sharply defined, as smooth and as cold." There was a studied absence of passion, and an entire concentra-

^W'

'

infirmitics could overcome, stood at the side of the woolsack pouring forth for hours an unbroken stream of clear and logical elo quence against the measure before the House. Everyone in the crowded chamber listened spellbound."

W^'*-^

. :f

SIR JOHN ROMILLY.

tion on thought, clear exposition and re morseless logic. Beneath his cold exterior, however, there was the deepest feeling. Occasionally when he was deeply moved this suppressed fire came to the surface. One of these occasions was the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which enlisted the deepest feelings of his nature. An eye witness to the final debate relates how "the Lord Chan cellor, pale, emaciated, evidently very ill, but possessed by a spirit which no physical

The peroration of his speech on the English humiliation in the Transvaal has often been admired as a specimen of parlia mentary eloquence: "I wish that while the Transvaal remains, as you say it does, under our control, the British flag had not been first reversed and then trailed in insult through the mud. I wish that the moment when you are weakening our empire in the East had not been selected for dismembering our empire in South Africa. These are the aggravations of the transaction. You have used no pains to conceal