With regard to the " Members of Parliament Charges and
Allegations " Bill, Mr. Chamberlain contended that it is absolutely necessary to investigate who had been the colleagues or agents in this country of the dynamite party in the United States ; and if, as he hoped, the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary party had not been their colleagues or agents, nothing was more essential to their position here than that their connection with them should be disproved. He regretted, however, to find that, instead of welcoming the perfectly trustworthy tribunal which the Government had offered to the Parnellites, they seemed to resent what they appeared previously to have been most eager in demanding. Mr. Chamberlain paid a most hearty and courageous tribute to Mr. Balfour's firmness and fairness in his office as Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, and commented on Mr. T. W. Russell's most important evidence with respect to the Vandeleur evictions, of which the Parnellites were striving to make so much capital. He reminded his hearers of the boast of a Gladstonian, made last Session, that they intended to arrange for "one really good eviction" once a fortnight., and to make great capital out of it by the aid of sensational reports and still more sensational speeches. He had never regretted, he said, for a moment his support of last Session's Crimes Act. It had gone far in putting down the cruel tyranny by which the tenant-farmers and labourers were overridian, and in restoring freedom.
