MR. PARNELL.
(From a Photograph by William Lawrence, Dublin.)
heard.[169] The Speaker “named” Mr. Parnell, who was then suspended and removed like Mr. Dillon. Mr. Finigan next repeated Mr. Parnell’s offence, and was removed in the same manner. On this occasion twenty-eight Irish Members were reported as refusing to leave their seats when the Speaker ordered the House to be cleared for a division. The Speaker “named” them all, and though Mr. Balfour and Mr. Gorst, on behalf of the Fourth Party, feelingly remonstrated against the vote for their suspension en bloc being put, the Speaker ruled that this was a question not of order but convenience, and the vote was carried by 410 to 4. Then the Speaker ordered them one by one to be removed. Five others, who were not included, procured their expulsion, and, after a struggle of three hours and a half, “the Speaker’s coup d’état,” as the Nationalists called it, ended.[170]
Mr. Gladstone now, pale and worn out with the excitement, delivered his speech in support of the new Rules of Procedure. Sir Stafford Northcote showed that he still shared the hostility of the Tory Party to any scheme for effectively crushing obstruction; but the conduct of the Irish Members had so incensed the House, that he had to limit his opposition to an amendment which but slightly weakened the force of Mr. Gladstone’s proposal. The Rule finally adopted declared that, when a Minister moved, after notice, that the state of public business was urgent, the Speaker was to put the question without debate. If this motion were carried by a majority of not less than three to one in a House of 300 Members, then the powers of the House for the regulation of its business should be transferred to the Speaker, who could enforce such rules as he pleased for its management, till the state of public business should be declared by him to be no longer urgent. A motion could be made by a Member to terminate urgency, but it must be put without debate. On the 9th of February the Speaker laid before the House the new Rules which he had drawn up for the state of urgency in which public business was now declared to be. They adopted the principle of the Clôture, which Sir Stafford Northcote deprecated and the Fourth Party abhorred, and gave the Speaker power, when supported by a three-fourths’ majority, to close a debate by putting the question without further discussion. No debate on a motion to go into Committee, or on postponing the preamble of a Bill under urgency, was to be allowed. Opportunities for moving adjournments were curtailed, and the Speaker was to have power to order a Member to stop talking when he became guilty of “irrelevance or tedious repetition.” In Committee the Clôture was not to be applied, but no Members (except those in charge of Bills or those who had moved amendments) were to be allowed to speak more than once to the same question.
Even under urgency the debate on the Coercion Bill in Committee went on slowly, and at one time (owing to Lord Randolph Churchill, who supported the Bill “with reluctance and distrust,” and Sir John Holker, who contended that “liberty was more precious than coercion,” displaying much sympathy with the opponents of the measure) it was feared that Ministers would lose the support of a large section of the Opposition. This fear was baseless, but the debate went on till the 21st of February, when the Speaker, on a motion summarily moved by Lord Hartington, suddenly terminated it under the new Rules. All amendments not disposed of after seven o’clock on the 22nd were put and divided on without debate. The measure received the Queen’s assent on the 2nd of March. A Bill giving the Irish police power to search houses for arms was introduced by Sir William Harcourt on the 1st of March, read a third time on the 4th, and passed by the House of Lords on the 18th of March. The struggle against coercion thus lasted nine weeks, and the violence with which the Irish Party conducted it is defended by Mr. T. P. O’Connor on the grounds that it consolidated the Nationalist Party, and that the scenes in the House so roused the temper of the Irish people that the Peers were afraid to reject the Land Bill of 1881, as they did the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of 1880.[171] On the other hand, they permanently alienated from the Irish Party the sympathies of a large class of moderate Liberals in England, who were anxious to legislate for Ireland in a sympathetic spirit.
After the Coercion Bill had passed, Mr. Dillon carried on a passionate agitation against the Government in Ireland, and Mr. Forster retaliated by imprisoning him and several other Land Leaguers as “suspects” in May. Mr. Finigan was sent down to Coventry, where an election was taking place, to canvass the constituency on behalf of the Tory candidate, Mr. Eaton, a tangible expression of gratitude for the occasional sympathy that had been extended to the Parnellites by Lord Randolph Churchill, and some other Conservatives during the Coercion debates. There was a lull in the storm, however, during which the Peers censured the Government for refusing to occupy Candahar. A vote of the House of Commons on the 25th of March reversed this censure, for the House rejected by 336 to 216 a motion of Mr. Stanhope’s, blaming the Government for withdrawing from Candahar “at the present time.” When the Tories refused to commit themselves to the proposition that it was the duty of the Government to hold Candahar permanently, and merely demanded its occupation “at the present time,” their attack assumed the complexion of a party demonstration. If England were to leave Candahar at all the sooner she left it the better, for the longer her troops stayed the more difficult it would be to establish the native government of Abdurrahman in the Province. The Army Discipline Bill, abolishing flogging, passed through the House of Commons without much opposition from the Tories, and was read a third time by the House of Lords on the 7th of April. The Budget was introduced by Mr. Gladstone on the 4th of April, and on an estimated expenditure of £84,705,000, and an estimated revenue of £85,900,000, he showed a probable surplus of £1,195,000. This was reduced by £100,000, consumed in paying off a loan for building barracks. Mr. Gladstone, therefore, reduced the Income Tax to 5d. in the pound, and converted the deficit thereby incurred of £275,000, into a surplus of £295,000, by levying an uniform surtax of 4d. a gallon on foreign spirits, in accordance with the test of standard strength applied to wines, and by minor changes in the Probate, Legacy, and Succession Duties. The most important part of his statement was that, during the past year, the National Debt had been reduced by £7,000,000. He also foreshadowed a great scheme for the extinction of £60,000,000 of debt, by the conversion of one-third of the short annuities terminating in 1885 into long annuities terminating in 1906. As this would make Consols scarce, it would put up their price, and enable him or his successor, in the course of ten years, to reduce the interest on the National Debt.
