On Thursday, the Irish Irreconcilables gave themselves up to a
sort of fury of obstruction, Mr. Healy, for instance, accusing Mr. Gladstone of "carefully absenting himself "—he was absent for a short time from the House—in order that the Chief Secre- tary might excuse himself from giving explanations to the Com- mittee; and at a later hour openly accusing Dr. Playfair, the Chairman of Committees, of being swayed "by the passions of the House." As usual, Lord Randolph Churchill made him- self conspicuous as a leader of the Irish Obstructionists. Mr. Parnell, on the other hand, was distinctly a moderating in- fluence. Mr. Forster proposed to limit the sum which might be expended in aid of emigration to 2200,000 in all, not more than a third of it being at the disposal of the Commission for any one year ; and finally, after almost the whole night's sit- ting, the Emigration Clause was carried, though a new dis- cussion is to be taken on it, it is said, on the report. The Government have expressly declared that they regard the Emi- gration Clause as a mere auxiliary part pf the Bill, Ey, a mode,
indeed, of assisting families in the over-populated portions of the west of Ireland to emigrate together, either to any foreign country or to any British dependency. And how such a pro- posal as this, a most useful auxiliary to the reform of the land tenure, can be resisted without doing a great injury to the poorer class of Irishmen, the Irish minority will find it hard to explain to their constituencies.
