low
bow; and, in short, the Tories had to bind themselves over to keep the
peace by their professions of a chivalrous desire to respect the person
and the feelings of the great Prime Minister. And thus it was that it
ended for the moment in a drawn battle--Mr. Chamberlain having to
withdraw his motion, and I my amendment.

[Sidenote: Slow progress.]

But in the meantime the progress with the Bill was terribly slow. We
were now on the second week with the third clause. Amendments were
disposed of one night only to find that the next day the number of
amendments, instead of being diminished, had been increased. It would be
a sheer waste of time and space to go into detail about these
amendments. The third clause is the clause which deals with the
questions that are to be excluded from the Irish Parliament. The list is
sufficiently long--peace and war--the Crown--the Lord-Lieutenancy--trade
and commerce--the coinage and the currency--copyright and
navigation--treason and treason felony. But even this list was not
sufficiently long for the Unionists. They propose to increase this list
of exemptions until, if they succeeded, the Irish Legislature would have
to shut up shop for want of business to attend to. One man gravely
proposed that the Irish executive--being made responsible for the peace,
order, and good Government of Ireland--should not have the right to
settle the procedure in the Irish criminal courts. Another gentleman
proposed that all cases referring to criminal conspiracy should be left
to the Imperial Government and Parliament. The meaning of all this was
that the Unionists wanted to draw a ring fence around the Orangemen of
Ulster, who had been threatening rebellion. First, by one set of
amendments the Irish Government was not to have a police able to put
them down, and then the Irish courts were not to be able to convict them
when they broke the law.

[Sidenote: The hours of labour.]

On June 9th the Unionists were on another line. They professed to think
that if the Irish Legislature were not compelled to do so they would not
prevent overwork and long hours. This led to the proposal that all
legislation on hours of labour should be taken out of the hands of the
Irish Parliament. Mr. Chamberlain argued this with his tongue in his
cheek--professing to dread the unequal competition in which poor England
would be placed if wealthy Ireland were allowed to compete unfairly by
longer hours. He urged this in a