The sixth day of the debate on the Address was stormy. It began with an unexpected motion for the adjournment of the House as a protest against the despatch of Sir Redvers Buller to Kerry. The member who moved it, Mr. Edward Russell, made an elaborate and indignant speech. He enlarged on the iniquity of employing a military officer accustomed to dealing with savage tribes to discharge duties which properly belonged to the civil magistrate. Lord Randolph dealt with this motion in a summary and even audacious manner. ‘In the opinion of the honourable gentleman,’ said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, ‘the appointment of Sir Redvers Buller is a startling innovation in our Constitution, a serious blow to civil and religious liberty, a wilful invasion of the immutable principles of justice, and other things of that serious kind. He holds strong opinions and he prophesies the most alarming results. He declares that all Kerry will immediately take an active part in the proceedings of the "Moonlighters" and that all Ireland will very shortly be involved in a general conflagration. Now, sir, I do not complain of the honourable member holding these opinions; they are opinions he is perfectly entitled to hold and to express. What I want the House to do is to compare the opinions he holds with the course he suggests. What is the course he proposes? He proposes that the House of Commons should immediately adjourn. What will be the effect of that course on Sir Redvers Buller or his appointment? Absolutely none. The House would adjourn, if they agreed with the honourable member, and, like the Emperor Titus, might exclaim that they had lost a day; but, before the House met again, Sir Redvers Buller would be well on his way to Kerry.
‘As to employing military officers in civil positions, had not Mr. Gladstone after the London riots appointed Sir Charles Warren, an officer on the active list, liable to be called away at any moment on military service, not to look after "Moonlighters," but after the civilised inhabitants of London?’ He suggested that the motion had been brought forward to delay the speech which Mr. Chamberlain, who had obtained the adjournment on the previous night, was known to be about to deliver. No greater compliment could be paid to a member than that his opponents should show that they feared what he was going to say. ‘I have to announce,’ he concluded, ‘that Her Majesty’s Government entirely decline to take any part in the discussion.’
This was hard hitting, but it succeeded. ‘Lord Randolph Churchill,’ said the Times the next day, ‘pricked the bubble with a Disraelian dexterity of touch.’ Angry speeches in reply failed to sustain the debate. The fate of the motion was never for a moment doubtful, and on a division it was rejected by a majority of 241 against 146.
The motion for the adjournment being thus brushed aside, the consideration of Mr. Parnell’s amendment was resumed. The treatment accorded to Mr. Chamberlain’s speech afforded some foundation for Lord Randolph’s charge. He was repeatedly interrupted both from above and below the gangway. Mr. Speaker was invited to notice the smallest deviation from the strictest relevancy. Cries of fierce derision saluted him from the Irish benches. The men around him did not conceal their discontent. And in his turn he struck back with dexterous severity. Ceremonious language, much ‘right honourable be-friending,’ smoothly-turned sentences, soft, purring accents, ineradicable antagonism; such was his speech. It was the first of many similar episodes in this new Parliament. Yet some respect is due to the forbearance of the Liberal majority. For six weary years the Liberal-Unionist leaders sat on the Front Opposition Bench. Their followers held the balance of every division. Their authority sustained the Conservative Government. Their debating skill was always at hand when all else failed. They supported Coercion; they justified Mitchelstown; they even defended the Special Commission; and with decisive effect. Yet never once, not even at times of sharpest indignation, were they denied by those who surrounded them their freedom of debate.
The Government were naturally delighted at this decided support. ‘You made a splendid speech last night,’ wrote Lord Randolph to Mr. Chamberlain (August 27). ‘It is curious, but true, that you have more effect on the Tory party than either Salisbury or myself. Many of them had great doubts about our policy till you spoke.’
On September 1, Mr. Sexton brought forward an amendment drawing attention to the Belfast riots, and this, of course, served as a convenient peg on which to fasten an almost interminable series of attacks upon Lord Randolph Churchill. At least twenty-five persons had been actually killed in the streets and many hundreds injured or arrested. All was attributed to the epigram, ‘Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right.’ Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was able to make a good defence. In spite of a long and solemn denunciation from Sir William Harcourt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer remained silent; but the debate ran on, full of life and spite, until on September 3 Mr. Labouchere sought to provoke him by embodying a direct charge in a special amendment. ‘Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird,’ said Lord Randolph piously; ‘and of all the unskilful and clumsy Parliamentary fowlers of whose manœuvres it has been my lot to be a witness, I never met a sorrier practitioner than the honourable member. In the various snares and wits and wiles with which he distinguished himself in the last Parliament he only succeeded in this—that he made himself the laughing-stock of the Parliament and of the public; and he appears to be desirous to add to-night to his already great reputation.’ ‘There was not,’ the speaker declared, with some boldness, ‘a shred of a shadow of a shade, or a shade of a shadow of a shred’ of foundation for such charges. So the attacks were brushed contemptuously away, and the Government majority did not fail in the Lobby to endorse their Leader’s disdain.
On September 3 the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved a resolution securing precedence for the Committee of Ways and Means and of Supply. So far as form was concerned, he based himself upon the precedent of 1841. But he ventured further upon an earnest yet restrained appeal to the House. ‘We have pledged ourselves as a Government to produce at the meeting of Parliament next year such schemes of legislation as we may be able to decide upon and mature in the autumn and winter. If the proceedings of this session were to be greatly protracted and if the energies of members and Ministers were to be greatly exhausted by them, it would become very difficult for the Government to summon Parliament as early next year. I ask no consideration on behalf of the Government, but in the interests of Parliament and of the country. This motion is intended to wind up, with as much expedition as is reasonable and decent, the business of the session, and to allow members to separate in time for the annual recess. I would not for a moment wish the House to understand that I am advocating a rapid or slovenly discussion of the Estimates. I have always protested against that and always shall. I ask only that the House will concentrate its attention on the Estimates and proceed without unusual dilatoriness and loss of time. The difficulties which lie in the future before the Government, are very great indeed. No one can be more deeply impressed with their magnitude than my colleagues and myself; and certainly I see no possibility of arriving at anything like a solution of those difficulties unless the House is prepared to give a reasonable amount of time during which the Government may take thought for a future so anxious and grave.’
The effect of this appeal, conjoined as it was with a promise that Mr. Parnell should have an opportunity for bringing forward his Tenants’ Relief Bill, was to induce the House to consent without a division to endow the Government with full control over public time. Lord Randolph, however, thought it proper to write a special letter of explanation to Lord Hartington, fearing apparently lest the Whig leader should become suspicious of any compact with the Nationalist party:—
Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, S.W.: September 5, 1886.
Dear Lord Hartington,—You will have observed in the papers that the Government gave a promise to Parnell to afford him facilities (i.e. a night) for laying his land proposals in the form of a Bill before Parliament.