Irish members have probably been the cause of more parliamentary disturbance than all the rest of their colleagues put together. Daniel O'Connell, whom Disraeli once called "the vagabond delegate of a foreign priesthood,"[295] was a perpetual source of trouble to the House. In 1840, he was the centre of one of the most noisy scenes that has ever outraged its dignity. Macaulay declared that he had never before or since seen such unseemly behaviour, or heard such scurrilous language used in Parliament. Members on both sides of the House stood up and shouted at the tops of their voices, shaking their fists in one another's faces.[296] Lord Norreys and Lord Maidstone particularly distinguished themselves by the pandemonium they created, while others of their colleagues gave farmyard imitations, and for a long time the whole House continued in a state of ferment. O'Connell's reference to the sounds emitted by honourable gentlemen as "beastly bellowings" only made matters worse. As a French visitor who was present during this scene has described: "Pendant plusieures heures plus de cinq cents membres crient de toutes leurs forces 'à l'ordre! à la porte O'Connell!' le tout accompagné des imitations zoologiques les plus étranges et les plus affreuses. C'étaient les cris de deux armées de sauvages en presence."[297] [295] "Letters of Runnymede," p. 6. [296] Trevelyan's "Life of Macaulay," vol. ii. p. 76. [297] "La France et L'Angleterre," par F. de Tassies. (Quoted in O'Connell's "Recollections," vol. i. p. 261.) "Imitations zoologiques" have always been a popular but by no means the only method employed by members desirous of drowning the words of a tiresome speaker. John Rolle, the hero of the "Rolliad," promoted a "smoking and spitting party "to interrupt and annoy Burke.[298] In 1784, the latter told a number of youthful opponents who interrupted him with their howls that he could teach a pack of hounds to yelp with more melody and equal comprehension. Ten years before the O'Connell scene Brougham excited the House to uproar of a similarly puerile character. He remained calm and unmoved, however, and, when the bestial cries of his audience subsided for a moment, pleasantly observed that by a wonderful disposition of nature every animal had its peculiar mode of expressing itself, and that he was too much of a philosopher to quarrel with any of those modes--a remark which does not appear to have subdued the clamour to any appreciable extent.[299] A similar uproar which the Speaker was powerless to quell arose in 1872, when Sir Charles Dilke brought forward a motion to inquire into the manner in which the income and allowances of the Crown were spent. [298] Thomas Moore's "Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 296. [299] Miss Martineau's "History of the Peace," vol. ii. p. 381.