The debate on the ninth resolution was enlivened with an
attack on Mr. Playfair for a totally imaginary offence. Colonel Nolan on Tuesday night intimated that during the sensational scene of this Session when the doctrine of constructive obstruc- tion was enforced against one or two very quiet and at least one absent Member, a clerk of the House came to him in the lobby, and asked whether he wished to be suspended from the service of the House,—a question which ho interpreted as a message from the Chairman of Committees implying that if he voted with the minority he would be included among the Obstructives, and suspended from the service of the House. Lord Randolph Churchill thereupon made a furious onslaught on Mr. Playfair, who was not present, having been compelled by indisposition to retire early, and the Government could only intimate their in- credulity, and point out the impropriety of assuming in Mr. Playfair's absence that he had acted as Colonel Nolan supposed. On Wednesday, Mr. Playfair declared that he was wholly inno- cent of the act alleged. He knew nothing about it. ' He should have thought it wholly improper to send a verbal message or intimation by any clerk of the House to any individual Member. If he had had a communication to make, he should have made it formally in writing ; and as for regarding a vote of any kind as an act of obstruction, a doctrine so untenable and contrary to all Constitutional ideas had never entered his mind. Colonel Nolan had to admit that the clerk in question had not asked his question as coming from the Chairman of Committees,— that was only Colonel Nolan's inference,—and so the matter dropped. It is rather hard on Mr. Playfair to have to answer not only for his own acts, but for an imaginative Irishman's leaps in the dark.
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