The debate on the Closure of the Home-rule Bill by
com- partments was concluded yesterday week, when Mr. Glad- stone's gagging resolution was carried by a majority of 32 (299 to 267). There had been several amendments, each of them proposing to extend the time for the discussion of special portions of the Bill, in one of which, the debate on the time to be given for the constructive part of the Bill, the Clauses 4 to 8 inclusive, the Government majority sank to 24 (268 to 244), or as it was subsequently rectified, 25. It is not necessary to specify the divisions on the other amendments. In most of them the Government received their now normal majority of 34. Mr. Gladstone, in the course of the debate, stated that Clause 9, the one regulating the number of Irish Members in the Imperial Parliament, would be proposed in the shape in which it stands in the Bill,--i.e., the " in-and- out " plan,—but that as the Government had not professed to be able to frame "a perfect plan" for the retention of the Irish Members, they were willing to accept from Parliament any modifications of that plan. Mr. Gladstone's modest plea reminds us of Dr. Newman's equal modesty in relation to a very different branch of the Iriali, question. In describing the religious condition of the average Irish beggar-woman, the untruthfulness, the dirt, the sloven- liness, which obscured her piety, he said : "I do not say, my dear brethren, that she is perfection," and then he could not re- frain from laughing at the mere idea. Mr. Gladstone, however, does not seem to have laughed over his by no means less con- spicuously self-evident admission. Probably he thought that admission a much greater triumph of candour than Dr. Newman's.
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