To this appeal Sir William Harcourt gave no kind of
answer. He absented himself from the House, indeed, for a large part of the evening after Mr. Redmond's speech, though his English followers were most anxious to hear his reply. The debate went on for some hours, and included a brilliant speech from Colonel Saunderson, who remarked that, as the O'Brien Arcade in New Tipperary, which was to have been "the metropolis of regenerated Ireland," had now passed into the possession of Mr. Smith-Barry (M.P. for South Hunts), he hoped that Mr. Smith-Barry would allow it to remain as a monument of the doings of the party of which Mr. O'Brien was the Corypinnus, and that a statue of that honourable gentleman might be erected upon it. After a speech of the very poorest kind from Mr. Healy, who evaded Mr. Redmond's challenge, and only expressed illimitable confidence in Mr. Gladstone, the Closure was moved and carried, and Mr. Sexton's amendment was rejected in a thin and unprepared House by the narrow majority of 21 (179 against 158), the result being received with great cheering by the Gladstonians and the Irish Party.
