It is certainly a misfortuy for the Government, iu dealing
with the so-called Obstructionists, that they themselves have been more irregular, as regards questions of order, this Session, than any Government of recent days. They are always doing something more or less out of order. Only on Wednesday, for instance, they brought forward for second reading a Public Works Loan Bill, which had been substantially altered and reprinted since it was introduced into the House, and which, after a dis- cussion wasting a good deal of time, the Speaker declared to be quite out of order, so that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had
to withdraw it. Later on in the same da e Government pro- posed the second reading of a Bill reduein the term of years within which a sum borrowed for School-Board purposes must be repaid, from fifty to thirty years, at a time when no one was prepared for the measure, and when Lord George Hamilton, who ought to have moved it, was not .even present in the House, though he appeared on the scene before the dis- cussion was over. To bring forward a Government measure of so much importance without even the head of the Depart- ment present to defend it, and contrary to all expectation, is in itself a most irregular proceeding, and one which the House is disposed to resent. And worse still, not many days ago, the Government pressed late at night a very important Bill affect- ing the payments for Irish schools, when it was quite impos- sible to discuss it,—and passed it, against the protests of the Minority. A Government habitually guilty of such irregulari- ties, is hardly in a position to take the highest ground towards more serious offenders. They will be told to extract the beam from their own eyes, before they apply themselves to removing the mote from their brother's eye.
Previous page
