to live in Ireland."’ O’Connell called upon Lord Althorp, as the representative of the Government, to say what truth there was in this statement.  Lord Althorp, taken by surprise, acted upon the impulse of the moment, which in his case was a feeling of reluctance to throw over poor Mr. Hill to be bullied by O’Connell and his redoubtable tail.  After explaining that no set and deliberate communication of the nature mentioned had been made to the Ministers, his Lordship went on to say that he “should not act properly if he did not declare that he had good reason to believe that some Irish Members did, in private conversation, use very different language” from what they had employed in public.

It was chivalrously, but most unwisely, spoken.  O’Connell at once gave the cue by inquiring whether he himself was among the Members referred to, and Lord Althorp assured him that such was not the case.  The Speaker tried to interfere; but the matter had gone too far.  One Irish representative after another jumped up to repeat the same question with regard to his own case, and received the same answer.  At length Sheil rose, and asked whether he was one of the Members to whole the Noble Lord had alluded.  Lord Althorp replied:  “Yes.  The honourable and learned gentleman is one.”  Sheil, “in the face of his country, and the presence of his God,” asserted that the individual who had given any such information to the Noble Lord was guilty of a “gross and scandalous calumny,” and added that he understood the Noble Lord to have made himself responsible for the imputation.  Then ensued one of those scenes in which the House of Commons appears at its very worst.  All the busybodies, as their manner is, rushed to the front; and hour after hour slipped away in an unseemly, intricate, and apparently interminable wrangle.  Sheil was duly called upon to give an assurance that the affair should not be carried beyond the walls of the House.  He refused to comply, and was committed to the charge of the Sergeant at Arms.  The Speaker then turned to Lord Althorp, who promised in Parliamentary language not to send a challenge.  Upon this, as is graphically enough described in the conventional terms of Hansard, “Mr O’Connell made some observation to the honourable Member sitting next him which was not heard in the body of the House.  Lord Althorp immediately rose, and amid loud cheers, and with considerable warmth, demanded to know what the honourable and learned gentleman meant by his gesticulation;” and then, after an explanation from O’Connell, his Lordship went on to use phrases which very clearly signified that, though he had no cause for sending a challenge, he had just as little intention of declining one; upon which he likewise was made over to the Sergeant.  Before, however, honourable Members went to their dinners, they had the relief of learning that their refractory colleagues had submitted to the Speaker’s authority, and had been discharged from custody.