On Monday Mr. Balfour moved the suspension of the 12
o'clock rule to the end of the Session, and intimated that it would be impossible to think of carrying either the Shop Hours Bill or the Benefices Bill this Session, or to take np the time of the House by conceding a discussion to the Deceased Wife's Sisters Bill. Sir William Harcourt insisted very strongly that no controversial measure aught to be discussed after 12 o'clock if the 12 o'clock rule were sus- pended, and pointed out that both Mr. Gladstone and he himself had accepted that limitation on the suspension of the 12 o'clock rule in recent years. Mr. Balfour denied altogether that by suspending that rule he intended to use the time so gained for carrying controversial measures by all-night sittings ; and in the end the suspension of the rule was carried, after hostile speeches from Colonel Saunderson, Mr. James Lowther, and Mr. T. G. Bowles, as well as from a fair number of Radical Members, by a majority of 193 (299 to 106), which is of course greatly in excess of the normal majority of the Government,—so that the disloyal Conservatives gained nothing by their opposition.
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