Lord Balcarres urged that anyone charged under the Bill would have the right to subpœna the Speaker or the Chairman of Committee who had witnessed the occurrence complained of to give evidence at the trial. It would be impossible, he said, to say that Mr. Speaker must not be summoned because he represented "the quintessence of the collective wisdom of the House of Commons," and "it would be a most deplorable thing if the Speaker and other officials and Members of the House were to be hauled into court for no other reason than to draw public attention to the Police Court proceedings, and to make sensational paragraphs in the evening papers." Mr. Mooney, an Irish member, said amid great laughter, that he thought the Bill must have been, drafted in the neighbourhood of Clement's Inn, because of the advertisement which it would give "to certain propagandists," whilst Mr. Hazleton declared that the Government were merely setting up an act of Parliament "as an Aunt Sally for every Suffragette to come along and have a shot at." Mr. Keir Hardie stated that in his opinion the Bill was only necessary because of the failure of members of the Government, and Members of the House to redeem their election pledges in regard to Women's Suffrage, and that it was because women felt that they could no longer appeal to the honour of the House of Commons, that they had taken to extreme measures. In his reply the Attorney General ignored this latter view of the case, but dealt at length with the right of summoning witnesses, pointing to the setting aside of the subpœnas to Mr. Asquith and Mr. Herbert Gladstone, in the case of Mrs. Baines' trial at Leeds, as a proof that this could easily be done again to protect the officers of the House, and especially the "great officers" from being summoned. He promised that stringent provisions with this object should be added in committee, saying "I do not think the House need trouble itself with that objection." Evidently, therefore, the gradual sweeping away of every safeguard of a free people against coercion, which had been won for us by the suffering and sacrifice and ceaseless effort of generations of our forebears, was as nothing to the Government, in comparison with the staving off of the Women's claim to vote. Now it was one of the fundamental rights of the accused person that they were proposing to tamper with, but the House would not agree. Sir Edward Carson, whilst expressing doubt as to the practicability of the Government's proposals, protested emphatically against the suggestion that there should be a law of subpœna for the House of Commons different to that which prevailed in the rest of the land. Finally the Prime Minister rose to say that though, after the trouble that had been taken in drafting it, he did not like to withdraw the Bill altogether, he yet thought that further time should be given for consideration, and that the debate should be adjourned.