On Monday night, Mr. Parnell, having questioned the First Lord
of the Treasury on the subject of the " Charges and Allegations Bill," which Mr. W. H. Smith proposed to introduce (with the consent of the House) after 12 o'clock, and elicitedfrom him that he could not provide time for a long debate, since it was a Bill that Mr. Parnell could either accept or reject at pleasure, though, as Mr. Smith was careful to explain, it was " reason- able that some discussion should take place on the second reading if honourable Members desire it," asked leave to move the adjournment of the House on an urgent question of public importance relating to this Bill. The Speaker declared this to be quite against the rules in relation to one of the Orders of the House; but Mr. Parnell persisted in making the attempt in spite of the Speaker, beginning his speech four separate times after being ruled out of order. After a question from Mr. Gladstone, to which Mr. W. H. Smith replied that no opposed Bill could be taken after 12 o'clock, Mr. Parnell again defiantly intervened, and asked whether the Nationalist Members were " to accept as sheep the judgment of a jury of butchers." By the " butchers," he afterwards explained that he did not mean the Judges who were to take their place on the Commission, but the Conservative majority of the House.
