Mr. Plunket, M.P. for the University of Dublin, delivered an
address before the Conservative Association of Glasgow yester- day week, the main purpose of which was to prove that the Government are responsible for muddling away the time of the Session, that the Conservative Party are entirely without responsibility in that matter, and that Lord Hartington's declara- tion in favour of the cloture,'—i.e., in favour of giving a bare majority of the House, with the assent of the Speaker, a power at any time to decide that a debate has lasted long enough, and that it should be brought to a close, was an adhesion to a grossly tyrannical policy. According to Mr. Plunket, the Irish Obstructionists should be dealt with one by one, and deprived during the Session of the power of speaking, though not of voting. The real difficulty of the Liberals, he said, was with their own inconvenient followers. " Just as the Government were settling down to business, there came, as it were, a loud ring at the street-door, and some of their poor relations dropped in for an afternoon tea, generally ending, as all would remem- ber, in a free-fight." Mr. Plunket is mistaken. This is not the difficulty of the Liberals,.but the difficulty of the nation, as wo have elsewhere shown. Sometimes the poor relation is a Home-ruler, like Mr. Healy ; sometimes a Tory, like Lord Randolph Churchill or Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett ; sometimes a Radical, like Mr. Peter Rylands. But it is the nation which suffers, and which suffers most when a Government is in power that undertakes solid work, instead of rather favouring waste of time like the Conservatives.
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