Perhaps the most direct divergence occurred on Mr. Brodrick’s amendment to omit Ireland from the scope of the new franchise. We have seen how Lord Randolph, as a young man in the Parliament of 1874, had first supported and later on--when circumstances had changed--opposed the extension to Ireland of electoral privileges similar to and simultaneous with those enjoyed in Great Britain. His speech at Edinburgh had laid emphasis on the danger of any large accession to the Irish vote. Only a few days before the question was discussed he had been re-elected, as described in the last chapter, to the chairmanship of the Council of the National Union. It was popularly assumed that he had come to terms with Lord Salisbury, and their reported reconciliation had been ostentatiously paraded in the party press. But when Lord Randolph resumed the debate on May 20, it soon appeared that he was still recalcitrant. Amid an ominous silence on the Conservative benches he asked Mr. Brodrick to withdraw his amendment, and declared that he had made up his mind to vote against it if it were carried to a division. He then declared once and for all in favour of the equal and similar treatment of Ireland in all matters of electoral reform; and this principle of ‘similarity and simultaneity,’ as it came to be called, has since been commonly identified with his name. One passage in this speech was at the time greatly admired and applauded. Mr. Smith during the autumn had argued that no votes should be given to Irish peasants who lived in mud-cabins, and the ‘mud-cabin’ argument had become a very prominent feature in the debate. Lord Randolph dealt with this contention in his most polished Parliamentary style. ‘I have heard,’ he said, ‘a great deal of the mud-cabin argument. For that we are indebted to the brilliant, ingenious, and fertile mind of the right honourable member for Westminster.[23] I suppose that in the minds of the lords of suburban villas, of the owners of vineries and pineries, the mud-cabin represents the climax of physical and social degradation. But the franchise in England has never been determined by Parliament with respect to the character of the dwellings. The difference between the cabin of the Irish peasant and the cottage of the English agricultural labourer is not so great as that which exists between the abode of the right honourable member for Westminster and the humble roof which shelters from the storm the individual who now has the honour to address the Committee.’ When the cheers and laughter had subsided he went on to quote the famous lines:-- Non ebur, neque aureum Meâ renidet in domo lacunar; Non trabes Hymettiae Premunt columnas ultimâ recisas Africâ.