he third session that had been practically given up to
Irishmen. The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880--a
Parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few
of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of
1880 had been realized. The Government had been anxious to legislate,
their majority had been ready to support them, but Ireland had blocked
the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the
House was to summon Parliament in an extra autumn session. Here was
another cause for reflection. England and Scotland were calling for
measures promised years ago, but no time could be found to discuss them.
Nothing was done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor
laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the housing of the
poor, or a dozen other urgent questions, because we were busy with
Ireland; and yet how little more loyal or contented did Ireland seem to
be for all we had done. We began to ask whether Home Rule might not be
as much an English and Scotch question as an Irish question. It was, at
any rate, clear that to allow Ireland to manage her own affairs would
open a prospect for England and Scotland to obtain time to attend to
theirs.[3]

This feeling was strengthened by the result of the attempts made in the
autumn session of 1882, to improve the procedure of the House of
Commons. We had cherished the hope that more drastic remedies against
obstruction and better arrangements for the conduct of business, might
relieve much of the pressure Irish members had made us suffer. The
passing of the New Rules shattered this hope, for it was plain they
would not accomplish what was needed. Some blamed the Government for not
framing a more stringent code. Some blamed the Tory and the Irish
Oppositions (now beginning to work in concert) for cutting down the
proposals of the Government. But most of us saw, and came to see still
more clearly in the three succeeding sessions, that the evil was too
deep-rooted to be cured by any changes of procedure, unless they went so
far as to destroy freedom of debate for English members also. The
presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering (or likely
soon to number) one-seventh of the whole--a section seeking to lower the
character of the assembly, and to derange its mechanism, with no further
interest in the greater part of its business except that of preventing
it from conducting t