On January 27, Forster's Bill for the Protection of Life and Property in Ireland having been introduced three days previously, Mr. Labouchere, speaking in favour of an amendment introduced in his name to the effect "that no Bill for {168} the Protection of Life and Property in Ireland will be satisfactory which does not include protection to the tenant in cases where it can be shown, to the satisfaction of a Court of Justice, that the tenant's rent is excessive or that he is unable, owing to temporary circumstances, to pay it," said that, while he was a genuine supporter of the Prime Minister, he did not intend to rain down blessings on that gentleman's head that evening. He found himself occupying a singular position. He was returned there as a Radical by a very advanced constituency, and, to his surprise, he found himself almost alone with his colleague as an advocate of Conservatism in the real, though not in the party, sense of the word. He was there to defend the Habeas Corpus. He was ready to admit that Englishmen had many virtues, but they were somewhat intolerant, and they were curiously intolerant when any country under their rule ventured to have the same virtues as themselves. There was nothing they valued so highly as self-government, and yet, when Ireland asked for self-government in local matters, they regarded the demand as something monstrous and intolerable. The Chief Secretary had urged that the Bill must be passed as quickly as possible on account of outrages! He must remember that there were such things as standing orders, and that honourable gentlemen opposite would be able to delay the Bill for a considerable time.... It was taking a really too Arcadian view of human nature to suppose that honourable gentlemen opposite would not use--or even misuse--every standing order of the House to prevent the passing of such a Bill. The right honourable gentleman seemed to have thought, in pleading urgency, that the Irish members would act like the "dilly, dilly ducks" which came to be killed when they were called. The reports of the outrages had come from magistrates most of whom were landowners, and from police constables; and they knew in England how to judge of constables' evidence. (Oh! oh!) He quoted a return. "Injured persons were Margaret Lydon, Patrick Whalem, and {169} Bridget Whalem. It appeared that: A dispute arose about the possession of a small plot of ground, and John Lydon assaulted the injured persons. Yet, in the very next case, John Lydon appeared as the injured person, because he was assaulted as the time of the above dispute by his own wife. This was obviously a little domestic difference between a husband and his spouse, yet it was converted into two separate outrages. As regarded cattle maiming, it was no new thing. Dean Swift jeered at his countrymen on the subject. 'Did they, like Don Quixote, look on a flock of sheep as an army?'"