We found that the House of Commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies:  a large British body (including some few Tories and Liberals from Ireland), which, though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare of the country and the dignity of the House, and would set aside its quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small Irish body, which, though it spoke the English language, was practically foreign, felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of Britain or the Empire, and valued its place in the House only as a means of making itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release.  When we had grasped this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects.  We had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on the stage!  We realized what Irish feeling was when we heard these angry cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected English partisans fell on deaf ears.  I remember how one night in the summer of 1880, when the Irish members kept us up very late over some trivial Bill of theirs, refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting beside me, said, “See how things come round.  They keep us out of bed till five o’clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs for six centuries.”  And we saw that the natural relations of an Executive, even a Liberal Executive, to the Irish members were those of strife.  Whose fault it was we were unable to decide.  Perhaps the Government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious.  Anyhow, this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that which existed between Scotch members, to whichever party they belonged, and the executive authorities of Scotland.

Thus the session of 1880, though it did not bring us consciously nearer to Home Rule, impressed three facts upon us:  first, that the House of Lords regarded Ireland solely from the point of view of English landlords, sympathizing with Irish landlords; secondly, that the House of Commons knew so little or cared so little about Ireland that when the Executive declared a measure essential to the peace of Ireland, it scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the House of Lords; thirdly, that the Irish Nationalists in the House of Commons were a foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation.  We did not yet draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw.  But the facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds.