right hon. and learned Gentleman, in the boldest, plainest, bluntest style, and in that imperious way which was his peculiarity and so well became him, informed the House that the Government had made up their minds to put their foot down, and would listen to no suggestion. If the Government wanted to make progress with Business, putting their feet down was not the way to do so, unless they took their feet up again very quickly and got into movement. His words were

"The Government have put forward a plan. They have given considerable attention to that plan, and, having done so, we do not intend to produce any other."

of the suitor. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, towards the close of his speech, devoted some attention to the Irish Party-the Party which was supposed to stand with the executioner behind it-and criticized, among other things connected with that Party, the manifesto it recently issued. He found fault with its form and its substance, and said he never before saw any document like it. He was not going to follow the right hon. and learned Gentleman's criticism of that manifesto. The right hon. and learned Gentleman understood better than he (Mr. M'Carthy) the etiquette of political documents; but he was very Such was the Government's announce- much mistaken when he endeavoured to ment to the House. The Government on point out that the Irish Party stated, in this question had said their last word. that manifesto, they were opposing this In vain might other Members talk and Closure Rule because they believed that argue. Their arguments would be use- if they turned out the present Governless. The Government had made up their ment they would never again be subminds, and the House must have their jected to interference with their speech proposal or nothing. So far, therefore, in that House. Those who drew up the as the Government was concerned hon. Circular condemned by the right hon. Members might avoid all this waste of and learned Gentleman never thought time and save themselves the trouble of of making any statement so absurd. hearing or making speeches, and go at The right hon. and learned Gentleman once to a division on this question. If said the Whip had not been sent to him, that were so, it illustrated forcibly the and that, therefore, he could not be supspirit and temper in which the Govern- posed to know all about it. True, the ment might be induced to use this Whip was not sent to the right hon. and clôture if they got it. As their minds learned Gentleman; but when Gentlemen were made up and unchangeable regard- undertook to speak in that House of any ing the form and substance of this Rule, document, they were supposed to have first so their minds might be made up as to read it carefully, and to be able to speak the peremptory manner in which it accurately of its contents. The right would be convenient to crush a small hon. and learned Gentleman thought minority. He was inclined to compare that in that Whip he had discovered a the attitude of the Government with great conspiracy. The right hon. and that of the hero of Marryatt's Pasha of learned Gentleman was always discoverMany Tales. The Pasha, who was the ing great conspiracies. He had a sort hero of that story, had a great deal of of divining power, which enabled him eloquence himself, but was impatient of to perceive conspiracies not visible to unrestricted loquacity in others-per- anyone else. In the middle of the haps there were great personages 17th century there was a remarkable with similar qualities in other places character named Matthew Hopkins, who as well as in Turkey. When a suitor was notorious as a witch-finder. He came to this Pasha and began to could discover witchcraft when everyone plead his cause, behind him stood an else failed to detect it; he could detect executioner, and the moment the Pasha a witch under the most subtle disguises. had heard enough, or the suitor went Well, as regarded political conspiracies into any needless repetition, the Pasha and combinations, he thought the right gave a signal, down came the execu- hon. and learned Gentleman was a motioner's axe, and the unhappy suitor dern Matthew Hopkins. But as Matwas cut off in the flower of his youth thew Hopkins was not always right in his and the middle of his sentence. It instinct, and sometimes mistook a chance seemed to him that the minority in that and harmless gathering of persons for an House was invited to occupy the position assembly of witches, so the right hon.

plexing kind to deal with than that which had come before the present Parliament. One reason which made it more difficult and more complicated was that those who were supposed to be obstructing then had the valuable assistance of some of the ablest and most eminent Members of the English Liberal Party. In some of the most protracted efforts against certain obnoxious measures which were then before the House, those who were now charged with Obstruction had the wise counsel, the close sympathy, and the constant support of two or three Members of Her Majesty's present Administration. He did not find fault with those Gentlemen for having acted in that manner. They acted on high principles, and with a perfect sense of justice, in opposing measures, some of which had since been proved to be dangerous to the country, and some of which had been abandoned. But while they were perfectly justified in the course they took then, he thought they were hardly justified in the course they were taking now. In considering Obstruction in the last Parliament, it should be remembered, too, that no measure was ever introduced with reference to Ireland so arbitrary, so obnoxious in its character, as the present Coercion Act, nor was the local administration of Ireland anything like so bad as it was under the present Government. Under the circumstances he could well understand how, to the official mind, there might appear to be less excuse for Obstruction in the last Parliament than in the present. But the Prime Minister distinctly narrowed his case, as far as Obstruction was concerned, to the proceedings of the present Parliament. He said that until that Parliament came into existence his mind was not made up. The right hon. Gentleman, referring to the obstruction of the South African Bill and the Army Discipline Bill in the last Parliament, said that

and learned Gentleman was not always right in his detection of political conspiracies. He could relieve the right hon. and learned Gentleman's mind by informing him that there was no conspiracy, coalition, or even arrange ment between the Conservatives and the Irish Party on this question. The Irish Members had their own reasons for opposing this measure, and the Conservatives had theirs, and both were endeavouring to accomplish the same end. If the result of this division should be to turn out the Government, and if the Tory Party came into power, they would be under no obligation whatever to the Irish Party; and if within a fortnight of their accession to Office they should propose a Coercion Bill twice as severe as the one at present in force, they could say to the Members from Ireland that they had not given the slightest pledge that they would take any other course. So much, therefore, for the grand discovery of a conspiracy between the two Opposition Parties. He would turn now to the most important speech in the debate, that of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister had divided his remarks into two parts-those which dealt with Procedure, and those which referred to the "devolution or delegation" of the powers of the House. In the first part of his speech | he dealt specially with Obstruction. How was the plan he proposed to the House justified by that part of his speech? In the first place, it justified some change in the Rules by referring to the great growth of Public Business in recent years. He admitted that in that respect the right hon. Gentleman thoroughly established his case. Nothing could be clearer than the fact that Public Business had grown enormously during the past few years; and, under existing circumstances, it must continue to grow, until it choked up the entire avenue of Procedure, and made some alteration inevitable. But the right hon. Gentleman went on to deal tion was experienced in that Parliament were "The two great subjects on which Obstrucwith Obstruction, and upon that he the subjects of the South African Bill and Army rested his main argument in favour of the peculiar change proposed in the Resolution. He (Mr. M'Carthy) was anxious to deal with the subject of Obstruction in the fairest spirit. He did not admit that Obstruction in this Parliament had been worse than Obstruction in the last. He even thought the late Government had Obstruction of a more difficult and per

Flogging. But in both of them the great length of the debates which occurred was mixed with circumstances which make it not easy to form a obstructive forces that were put in action (ironiperfectly accurate and impartial estimate of the cal cheers and counter cheers), because I believe I am right in regard to the South African Bill, and I know I am right in regard to the Army Discipline Bill, in saying that very important changes were introduced into these measures, and were the fruit and progress of [Fourth Night.]

The present Parliament, therefore, was the one to which the Prime Minister's remarks about Obstruction were particularly addressed. And here he would say a word about the manner in which the. Urgency Rules were obtained. The Prime Minister declared that they were passed by the help of an extraordinary error in tactics on the part of a certain number of Members of the House. He said

"They contrived to place themselves in such a position that we were able to deal with them in a single division; otherwise we might have been occupied with divisions throughout the night, and at the close of them would have been totally out of condition for dealing with the question of Urgency."-[3 Hansard, cclxvi. 1144.]

long debates, and where that is so, it is not fair | the House. He supposed English statesto drive home without a great deal of hesitation men did not propose always to govern the charge of Obstruction." Ireland by coercion. The hour would some time come when the Prime Minister of England would have to acknowledge that he could not govern Ireland by coercion, and that some other means should be tried. When that time came, whether by a separation of Parliaments or by the reconciliation of the Irish people, if that were possible, to the English Parliament, they would need no clôture to put down Obstruction. But at present the Government said in so many words that they wanted this power of clôture in order that they might more effectively pass a Coercion Bill for Ireland. They wanted to gag the Irish Members in order that they might have less trouble in fettering them. That reminded him of the case of the highwayman told of by Sydney Smith, who not merely knocked down and began to rifle the pockets of his victims, but complained of their pestering him with their groans and obstructing him by their struggles. By maladministration they produced discontent and disaffection in Ireland; that disaffection was met by coercion; the coercion in turn provoked what was called Obstruction; and thus they were ever tracing a vicious circle. Until they tried some better system there was no satisfactory way out of their difficulty that he could discover. He trusted that they would some time or other enter upon a better path; but, in the meantime, why should they destroy their own Parliamentary system because of an exceptional and, he hoped, a transient condition of things? Again, Obstruction of some kind had been a not uncommon phenomenon in Parliamentary annals. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) spoke the other night of the happy days when the Business of the House was over in a few hours. (Mr. M'Carthy) did not remember of having read of those happy days. He failed to find any account of the halcyon time when the Business of the House was disposed of in such an expeditious manner. He did not remember reading of those happy days in the biographies of Chatham and Pitt and Canning. There might have been a few such halcyon days a short time before the Reform Bill; although before the Reform Bill they had their bouts of Obstruction as vigorous as ever they had had

The occasion to which the right hon. Gentleman referred was that upon which a number of Irish Members were suspended in a cluster, and not one after another. He might tell the right hon. Gentleman, as a matter of some little historical interest, that they committed no error in tactics at all. They were perfectly well aware that they could have occupied the whole night if they chose to take a division upon every suspension; but they were not concerned in occupying any more time in that demonstration than was occupied in the actual act of their expulsion. They desired to make a protest in the most dignified way possible against an intolerable and arbitrary Act, and they thought that could be done with more emphasis, with more dignity, and in a manner more worthy of a national cause by adopting the course they did than if they went through a number of tedious and unmeaning divisions. What was the cause of the exceptional Obstruction to which the Prime Minister referred in the present Parliament? There was one cause, and one only, and that was the introduction of the Coercion Bill. It would have been impossible for Irish Members who cared for their country, or who had any of the spirit of an Irishman in them, not to resist the introduction of that Bill by every means at their disposal. But that was an exceptional case-it was a crisis which did not often occur in the history of the country, and against which it would be absurd to provide by exceptional legislation in the shape of a proposal like that now before

He

since. Let him take the debates on the | posed to do now. It was said that the Reform Bill itself in 1831. Mr. Molesworth, in his History, said that

that a certain body of hon. Members were always tedious and should not be heard. They could not do that. But what were they to do? The Speaker might fail to see some of those hon. Members, and might take other Mem

be gone all the same; and in the end, when no English Member rose to address the House, then one of these malignant creatures was sure to rise, and they would have to listen to his speech. Then another illustration struck him as he stood that day behind the Speaker's Chair. Several Private Bills had been before them that afternoon. Suppose a num

yet they had no clôture. He would now advert to that very unlucky part of the speech of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, in which he stated what he would do if he only had the power which it was proposed to confer upon the majority by this Resolution-bers instead. Yes; but the time would that part of his speech in which he singled out four Members of that House of whose tiresome eloquence he would relieve the House. He (Mr. M'Carthy) was connected by Party with only one of those hon. Members; and he would say of that hon. Member that he was a man-however he might, at times, take a course unwelcome to the House-of remarkable ability, remarkable know-ber of Members chose to speak on those ledge, of wide resource; a man of that force of character that he must always be heard in any assembly of reasonable men, despite of any clôture. The noble Lord had been very metaphysical, and had drawn a supersubtle distinction between the House and the Members of the House. The time taken in the proceedings of the House was the property of the House, and was not, the noble Lord said, the property of any Members of the House, the House being something essentially different from its Members. He thought the noble Lord would have been more straightforward if he had said the majority of the House instead of the House; if he had said that the time was the time of the majority-that was the Government. But it was not a question of the right of individual Members to take up the time of the House by speaking; it was a question of the right of constituents. The constituents of Members had an absolute right to have their opinions publicly expressed by those whom they had sent to Parliament, whether the Government wished it or not. He asked whether this plan would really prevent Obstruction if there were a body of men in the House who were determined, for the mere sake of Obstruction, to oppose the Business? Suppose there were 40 of them-which was not an impossible number-and

each of those Members exercised his right to speak for a quarter of an hour every night, to speak strictly relevantly and straight to the point, they would consume 10 hours. And what was the House to do? They could not say that such an hon. Member was sure to be tedious, and sure to speak irrelevantly. They could not pass a Resolution stating

Private Bills. They might have taken special pains to make themselves acquainted with the questions involved, and be able to speak with authority on those questions. How could the Rule be applied if those Members spoke pertinently on each point? Yet the time of the House might in that way be very effectually wasted. If Local Business were taken out of the hands of Parliament altogether, Parliament would be left to deal with Imperial affairs, and the temptation to Obstruction would be destroyed. If they were to vote by ballot on the question of closure, in all probability it would not be carried. Certainly, if it was carried, it would only be by the dark shadow of a Dissolution which was kept floating over the heads of hon. Members on the other side. He did not think himself, at any time, that there was much fear of a Dissolution just now. He should say that with his Party it was not a question of fear, but a question of hope. He confessed that he, for one, had always admired the English Parliament as an English Representative Body; and he once had hoped that if they came in Ireland to have an Irish National Chamber, it would be modelled on the English Parliament. Now, he should not say "if," but "when" they had an Irish National Parliament, he trusted it would be modelled on what that Parliament had hitherto been, and not on what the right hon. Gentleman proposed to make it in the future. He trusted they would always avoid in an Irish Parliament that sham system-that quack system-which dealt with symptoms and thought it was dealing with disease; which paltered with consequences and thought it was