The debate on the Address in the Commons lasted eleven nights, the Irish Members moving endless amendments, with the avowed object of delaying the Coercion Bill, which was eventually brought in by Forster on the 24th January. The gist of the Bill was arrest on suspicion and imprisonment without trial. The Irish Members fought it tooth and nail, and were defied by Gladstone in a speech of unusual fire. "With fatal and painful precision," he exclaimed, "the steps of crime dogged the steps of the Land League; and it is not possible to get rid of facts such as I have stated, by vague and general complaints, by imputations against parties, imputations against England, or imputations against Government. You must meet them, and confute them, if you can. None will rejoice more than myself if you can attain such an end. But in the meantime they stand, and they stand uncontradicted, in the face of the British House of Commons." The speech in which this tremendous indictment was delivered attracted loud cheers from Liberals and Conservatives alike, but stirred the Irish to fury. I remember Mr. O'Connor saying to me, "If only Gladstone had been in opposition, how he would have enjoyed tearing into shreds the statistics which he has just quoted!" The resistance to the Bill became impassioned. The House sat continuously from the afternoon of January 31st to the forenoon of February 2nd. Members were divided, like miners, into Day-Shifts and Night-Shifts. The Refreshment-Rooms at the House were kept open all night, and we recruited our exhausted energies with grilled bones, oysters, and champagne, and went to bed at breakfast-time. At 9.30 on Wednesday morning, February 2nd, Mr. Speaker Brand, who had been absent from the House for some hours, suddenly resumed the Chair, and, without waiting for J. G. Biggar to finish his speech, put the question that leave be given to bring in the Coercion Bill. The Irish raved and stormed, and cried out against the Speaker's action as "a Breach of Privilege." That it was not; but it was an unexpected and a salutary revolution. When questioned, later in the day, as to the authority on which he had acted, the Speaker said, "I acted on my own responsibility, and from a sense of my duty to the House." Thus was established, summarily and under unprecedented circumstances, that principle of Closure which has since developed into an indispensable feature of Parliamentary procedure.