of exemptions until, if they succeeded, the Irish Legislature would have to shut up shop for want of business to attend to.  One man gravely proposed that the Irish executive—­being made responsible for the peace, order, and good Government of Ireland—­should not have the right to settle the procedure in the Irish criminal courts.  Another gentleman proposed that all cases referring to criminal conspiracy should be left to the Imperial Government and Parliament.  The meaning of all this was that the Unionists wanted to draw a ring fence around the Orangemen of Ulster, who had been threatening rebellion.  First, by one set of amendments the Irish Government was not to have a police able to put them down, and then the Irish courts were not to be able to convict them when they broke the law.

[Sidenote:  The hours of labour.]

On June 9th the Unionists were on another line.  They professed to think that if the Irish Legislature were not compelled to do so they would not prevent overwork and long hours.  This led to the proposal that all legislation on hours of labour should be taken out of the hands of the Irish Parliament.  Mr. Chamberlain argued this with his tongue in his cheek—­professing to dread the unequal competition in which poor England would be placed if wealthy Ireland were allowed to compete unfairly by longer hours.  He urged this in a speech directed to every absurd prejudice and alarm which the ignorant or the timid could feel—­altogether made a most unworthy contribution.  John Burns—­breezy, outspoken—­not friendly to all things done by the Liberals in the past, but firm in his Home Rule faith—­went for Mr. Chamberlain in good, honest, sledge-hammer, and workmanlike fashion.  The member for Battersea even dared to blaspheme Birmingham—­the Mecca of the industrial world—­for its notoriously bad record in industrial matters—­an attack which Joe seemed in no way to relish.  And all the time the Old Man—­with his hand to his ear, and sitting on the very end of the Treasury Bench, so as to be nearer the speaker—­listened attentively, sympathetically, occasionally uttering that fine leonine cheer of his.  It was on this amendment that the Ministerial majority fell, owing to various accidents, to 30, and the Tories cheered themselves into a happy condition of mind for a few minutes.

[Sidenote:  The guillotine—­but not yet.]

Towards the end of the sitting there was a certain feverishness of expectation.  Dr. McGregor, a Scotch Highland member, had announced that at half-past six he would move the closure of the third clause—­on which we had now been working for a fortnight.  But Mr. Mellor refused to put such a drastic proposal on the suggestion of a private member.  There was, however, a very plain intimation that if a Minister were to make such a proposal it might be considered differently; all of which meant that we were approaching—­slowly, patiently, forbearingly—­but still approaching the moment when drastic steps would be taken to accelerate progress.