he found that this would take time. The rules were dear to Members opposed to reform, because they were so contrived as to give the utmost facilities for impeding legislative change. Hence, he intimated, on the 5th of July, that he would deal with the difficulty after the Recess. Mr. Parnell’s retort was to obstruct business at that sitting till about three in the morning. He and his friends not only opposed the clause in the Irish Judicature Bill fixing the salaries of the Irish Judges,[103] but they affected to have suddenly taken an absorbing interest in the Solicitors Examination Bill which had come down from the House of Lords. On the 23rd of July Sir Stafford Northcote, still shrinking from altering the rules of the House, tried to meet the case by moving that the Government should confiscate for their business the nights allotted to private members. This enabled the Parnellite Party to again obstruct business, as champions of Parliamentary privileges. By this time the House of Commons was working itself up into a fit of burning indignation. The anger of the Conservatives indeed knew no bounds, for they saw that they must either submit to Mr. Parnell, or surrender privileges of obstruction which they had themselves found useful in defeating measures of reform in bygone days. Mr. Parnell’s Party sat maliciously cool and annoyingly calm through all the turmoil; indeed, Mr. Parnell seemed bent on provoking the Tories opposite him, by assuming towards them a demeanour of supercilious aristocratic superiority that cut them at every moment like a whip. His manner of disdainful mastery indicated that he must have some dire instrument of torture in reserve for them. And so he had. He and his friends had picked up a Bill which nobody dreamt of seriously attacking, because it was purely an administrative measure proposed by the Colonial Office. It gave the Colonies and the two Dutch Republics in South Africa the means of forming a Confederation if they chose to do so. It was perfectly harmless and permissive, but it was unfortunately complex and loaded with detail. Mr. Parnell and his band had devoted their unremitting energies to mastering, not only this Bill, but every imaginable point in South African policy. Hence, when it came before the House, they suddenly appeared in the character of South African “experts,” who knew infinitely more about the subject than the unfortunate Minister in charge of the measure. The Government had also annexed the Transvaal Republic under the erroneous impression that the Boers desired annexation, and Lord Grey had frankly admitted in the House of Lords that South Africa was not ripe for Confederation. A few Radical doctrinaires, led by Mr. Courtney, alarmed at the annexation of the Transvaal, also disliked the Bill. In fact, an ideal opportunity for practising obstructive tactics had been presented to Mr. Parnell by the Government, and he took advantage of it ruthlessly. He and his