" Obstruction " has been the characteristic Irish virtue of
the week. Yesterday week it began with a motion for adjourn- ment, moved by Mr. O'Sullivan, in order to protest against the arrest of Father Sheehy, a Roman Catholic priest, in the county of Limerick, who was arrested, with others, at Kilmallock, under the provisions of the Peace Preservation Act. Lord. Randolph Churchill, as usual, joined the Irish Irreconcilables in the attack on the Government, and made the completely unfounded assertion that, having permitted Mr. Dillon, so long as he stayed in Ireland, to use with impunity precisely similar lan- guage to that for which he was arrested, they arrested him as soon as ho was about to leave off making those speeches, and to join in the constitutional discussion of tho .Land Act in Par- liament. Having consumed a large portion of Friday night with this motion for adjournment, the Irish Irreconcilables obstructed the Budget Bill on Monday, until Mr. Forster quitted the House, when, their pet antipathy being gone, they allowed Mr. Justin McCarthy to move his vote of censure on the administration of the Coercion Act; and then on Tues- day they talked out the morning sitting,—granted expressly for the vote of censure,—with an immense speech of Mr. O'Donnell's, much of which was about as relevant to the censure as it was to the laws of settlement and entail. The Home-rulers did not really want the verdict of the House on their censure, and proved that they did not. What they did want was to express their hatred of Mr. Forster, and to waste time.
