heard.[169] The Speaker “named” Mr. Parnell, who was then suspended and removed like Mr. Dillon. Mr. Finigan next repeated Mr. Parnell’s offence, and was removed in the same manner. On this occasion twenty-eight Irish Members were reported as refusing to leave their seats when the Speaker ordered the House to be cleared for a division. The Speaker “named” them all, and though Mr. Balfour and Mr. Gorst, on behalf of the Fourth Party, feelingly remonstrated against the vote for their suspension _en bloc_ being put, the Speaker ruled that this was a question not of order but convenience, and the vote was carried by 410 to 4. Then the Speaker ordered them one by one to be removed. Five others, who were not included, procured their expulsion, and, after a struggle of three hours and a half, “the Speaker’s _coup d’état_,” as the Nationalists called it, ended.[170] Mr. Gladstone now, pale and worn out with the excitement, delivered his speech in support of the new Rules of Procedure. Sir Stafford Northcote showed that he still shared the hostility of the Tory Party to any scheme for effectively crushing obstruction; but the conduct of the Irish Members had so incensed the House, that he had to limit his opposition to an amendment which but slightly weakened the force of Mr. Gladstone’s proposal. The Rule finally adopted declared that, when a Minister moved, after notice, that the state of public business was urgent, the Speaker was to put the question without debate. If this motion were carried by a majority of not less than three to one in a House of 300 Members, then the powers of the House for the regulation of its business should be transferred to the Speaker, who could enforce such rules as he pleased for its management, till the state of public business should be declared by him to be no longer urgent. A motion could be made by a Member to terminate urgency, but it must be put without debate. On the 9th of February the Speaker laid before the House the new Rules which he had drawn up for the state of urgency in which public business was now declared to be. They adopted the principle of the _Clôture_, which Sir Stafford Northcote deprecated and the Fourth Party abhorred, and gave the Speaker power, when supported by a three-fourths’ majority, to close a debate by putting the question without further discussion. No debate on a motion to go into Committee, or on postponing the preamble of a Bill under urgency, was to be allowed. Opportunities for moving adjournments were curtailed, and the Speaker was to have power to order a Member to stop talking when he became guilty of “irrelevance or tedious repetition.” In Committee the _Clôture_ was not to be applied, but no Members (except those in charge of Bills or those who had moved amendments) were to be allowed to speak more than once to the same question.