Mr. W. O'Brien asked leave on Monday to move the
adjournment of the House on a matter of urgent public importance, in order to give his own account of the brush between the police and the people at Charleville on Sunday week ; and being told by the Speaker that it was not consistent with the orders of the House that he should do so after the similar motion last week on the same subject, he asked leave to make a personal explanation, and gave his own narrative of the facts, according to which, as we need hardly say, the police were utterly and grossly in the wrong, and acted the parts of inflamed and excited men struck by panic. The Speaker at length stopped Mr. O'Brien, saying that though a personal explanation might be tolerated, and he had been anxious to tolerate it, yet it must be confined strictly to the limits of a personal explanation, and not diverge into a number of new charges against men whom no one would have any oppor- tunity to defend. At length Mr. O'Brien was silenced, but not till he had managed to make a speech probably closely resembling the speech he would have made had he been per- mitted to move the adjournment. It is not easy even for the Speaker to balk a Parnellite Member of his supposed right to speak. Of his certain right to be silent he is not so chary.
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