The Irish Members, now and then assisted by Lord Randolph
Churchill, or Mr. Cowen, or Mr. Macdonald, have succeeded in making two or three "scenes" during the last week's Coercion debates. Yesterday week they were particularly violent, first, on the question of securing immunity from arrest for Members of the House of Commons, and then on the question of exempt- ing Irish women from arrest for suspicion. Mr. Parnell, who reappeared in the House on Friday week, described how he had been followed about in France by French detectives, and said that unless the offence of which any man was sus- pected was carefully described in the warrant for arrest, he could have no clue at all to the circumstances which had caused the suspicion. Lord Randolph Churchill affected to fear his own arrest whenever he should go over to Ireland, and im- puted to Mr. Forster that Michael Davitt had been taken into custody for a speech in which he had made a personal attack on the Irish Secretary,—the one circumstance, as Mr. Forster ex- plained, which weighed heavily with him against the arrest. Mr. T. P. O'Connor openly accused the Government of wishing to have the means of imprisoning and silencing a political opponent ; and Mr. T. D. Sullivan, in the name of the Irish
Members, tragically addressed Mr. Gladstone as the despot to whom the dying gladiators addressed. their despairing farewell.
