“We will never make any impression on the House,” he said, “until we interfere in English business. At present Englishmen manage their own affairs in their own way, without any interference from us. Then, when we want to get our business through, they stop us. We ought to show them that two can play at this game of obstruction. Let us interfere in English legislation; let us show them that if we are not strong enough to get our own work done, we are strong enough to prevent them from getting theirs.”(159) Mr. Ronayne found in Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar an apt pupil. Mr. Biggar used to say: “The English stop our Bills. Why don’t we stop their Bills? That’s the thing to do. No Irish Bills; but stop English Bills. No legislation; that’s the policy, sir, that’s the policy. Butt’s a fool, too gentlemanly; we’re all too gentlemanly.” Mr. Biggar’s oratory is happily now only a tradition. It was not good oratory of any kind, but it effected its purpose. More skilful exponents of the art of obstruction have appeared since Mr. Biggar’s day, but none more successful. The expedient may have been justifiable in the case of a small minority struggling unavailingly against an overwhelming and indifferent majority. It is quite true that during the mild reign of Mr. Butt the British political parties treated legislative proposals emanating from the Irish Parliamentary Party with scant courtesy. It is equally true that obstruction in the House of Commons proved a potent incentive to the more careful consideration of Irish claims. We have travelled far since those days, but obstruction remains as one of the most formidable weapons in the armoury of an opposition. The British political parties have, when in opposition, made full use of a device that Mr. Butt regarded as “undignified, useless, and mischievous.” And not only is obstruction with us, but its hateful if necessary corollary, the closure, has tended every year to become more oppressive. The parliamentary historian of the future will note that it was on June 10th, 1887, that “closure by guillotine,” that monstrous variant of an accursed type, was first proposed in the House of Commons. A few days later the guillotine fell on several of the most important clauses of a new Crimes Bill. So closely associated with Ireland are the most recent and most detrimental changes in the procedure that governs the debates in our Imperial Parliament!