rning early in 1881. "You have heard," I asked, "that the Bessborough
commission are to report for the Three F's?" "I have not heard," he said;
"it is incredible!" As so often comes to pass in politics, it was only a
step from the incredible to the indispensable. But in 1880 the
indispensable was also the impossible. It was the cruel winter of 1880-1
that made much difference.

In point of endurance the session was one of the most remarkable on
record. The House of Commons sat 154 days and for 1400 hours; some 240 of
these hours were after midnight. Only three times since the Reform bill
had the House sat for more days; only once, in 1847, had the total number
of hours been exceeded and that only by seven, and never before had the
House sat so many hours after midnight. On the Coercion bill the House sat
continuously once for 22 hours, and once for 41. The debates on the Land
bill took up 58 sittings, and the Coercion bill 22. No such length of
discussion, Mr. Gladstone told the Queen, (M24) was recorded on any
measure since the committee on the first Reform bill. The Reform bill of
1867 was the only measure since 1843 that took as many as 35 days of
debate. The Irish Church bill took 21 days and the Land bill of 1870 took
25. Of the 14,836 speeches delivered, 6315 were made by Irish members. The
Speaker and chairman of committees interposed on points of order nearly
2000 times during the session. Mr. Parnell, the Speaker notes, "with his
minority of 24 dominates the House. When will the House take courage and
reform its procedure?" After all, the suspension of _habeas corpus_ is a
thing that men may well think it worth while to fight about, and a
revolution in a country's land-system might be expected to take up a good
deal of time.

V

It soon appeared that no miracle had been wrought by either Coercion Act
or Land Act. Mr. Parnell drew up test cases for submission to the new land
court. His advice to the army of tenants would depend, he said, on the
fate of these cases. In September Mr. Forster visited Hawarden, and gave a
bad account of the real meaning of Mr. Parnell's plausible propositions
for sending test cases to the newly established land commission, as well
as of other ugly circumstances. "It is quite clear as you said," wrote Mr.
Gladstone to Forster in Ireland, "that Parnell means to present cases
which the commission must refuse, and then to treat their refusal as
showing that they cannot be truste