Mr. O'Kelly attended in his place in the House of
Commons yesterday week, as ordered by the House, but did not at first seem at all disposed to give the pledge not to proceed in the matter of his challenge to Mr. MacCoan, M.P. for Wicklow, which the House required. He made a hectoring little speech. "I do not care much," he said, "about the opinion of this House, or the opinion of this country,"—though our flag was once valuable to him, if he was the man whom it protected from death in Cuba at the hands of the Spaniards. "But," said Mr. O'Kelly, "I do think a good deal about the opinion of men of honour who live outside this country, with many of whom I have, during the better part of my life, had intimate relations. I believe that men of honour outside this country will justify me in the position I have taken ; but so far as the junior Member for Wicklow is concerned, I see no reason why he should have thought well to bring this matter before the House, because he had already placed himself beyond any risk that might have arisen through my action, by declining to meet me. Sir, my opinion of a man who deliberately offers an insult to another, and then deliberately refuses either to apologise or to afford reparation, is that that man, by that act, falls out of the category of honourable men, and is therefore no longer worthy of attention from any man." Mr. Gladstone thereupon, after remarking that Mr. O'Kelly's slight respect for the House of Commons "is not perhaps a matter on which the character and dignity of this House will, in the main, ultimately depend," insisted that Mr. O'Kelly had not given the undertaking required ; whereupon Mr. O'Kelly rose again, and declared that be had intended to say that after the receipt of Mr. MacCoan's letter, he considered the matter practically at an end. Mr. Gladstone and Sir S. Northcote accepting this as an assurance that hostile proceedings were to be dropped, the discussion terminated, Mr. O'Kelly having compensated himself by an affront to the House of Commons and the British nation, who care nothing about it, for his reluctant promise to let Mr. MacCoan alone.
