o challenge. You are within the ring-fence of a
technical rule, which compels you to fight your issue there and not one
inch outside of it. This often means that questions are raised in the
most indirect way--that you seem to be voting for one thing while you
really mean another, and that if you do not vote that way, you cannot
vote any other. So it happened on this occasion. And we drifted about
for the best way of raising the question of the presence of the Irish
members, and the Government were for a while in a state of absolute and
painful uncertainty. Then came one of those desultory conversations on
points of order, in which so large a body as the House of Commons cannot
shine--one man suggesting one method, one man another; half-a-dozen
different methods proposed in as many minutes by half-a-dozen different
members.

[Sidenote: 103 v. 80.]

At last Mr. Redmond seemed to hit off the situation by a proposal to
omit a couple of sub-sections in the ninth clause. But Mr. Redmond had
scarcely spoken when the House found itself in an extraordinary and most
embarrassing dilemma. The object of Mr. Redmond was plain enough; what
he desired to do was to retain the Irish members in the Imperial
Parliament in their present, that is to say, in their full,
strength--103 they are now, 103 he wanted them to remain. The position
of the Government was equally clear. With emphatic language--with a
superabundance of argument--Mr. Gladstone stated his conviction that the
Irish members should not remain in such large numbers and that the
number should be 80. This was all clear enough; but what about the
position of all the other parties in the House?

[Sidenote: Tot homines, tot sententiae.]

At first sight, it would appear that this ought to be very clear. The
Tories and the Unionists had several amendments on the paper. One wanted
the Irish members reduced to 48, one wanted to have them reduced to 40,
and several of them desired that they should be reduced still
further--in fact, should reach the irreducible minimum of none at all.
It was assumed, of course, that gentlemen who had thus indicated their
desire for the reduction of the Irish members, or for their
disappearance altogether, would vote against a proposition which asked
that they should remain in full force. If this course were adopted, Mr.
Redmond would be crushed under a combination of the Liberals, who wanted
the numbers to be 80, and the Tories who wanted the Irish