Members of Parliament could scarcely fail to have been impressed by the extraordinary scenes which had taken place, and when the adjournment of the House was moved that night a Unionist Member, Mr. Claud Hay, asked the Home Secretary whether it had been necessary to inconvenience its Members by surrounding Parliament with a body of police, both upon horse and foot, as great as though it had been a fortress instead of a deliberative assembly. It appeared to him, he said, that Mr. Gladstone was afraid of the women, but they were entitled to make a protest even if it were not agreeable to Members of Parliament, and there was no need to brow-beat them by using force. Mr. Gladstone replied that he had very little knowledge of what had been going on outside the House, but Mr. Claud Hay interrupted him with, "Then you ought to have!" At that he hesitated and changed his tone, saying that it was the police who were responsible for keeping open the approaches to the House, that they had only done their duty, and that he hoped they would continue to do it in the same way. Next morning all the world was talking of the mêlée, and in the newspapers there were long accounts and startling headlines describing the scenes that had taken place. These were very much more favourable to the women than any which had been published hitherto, for, though the Press was still far from admitting the extreme urgency of the cause of Women's Suffrage, or the need for the militant tactics as a means of obtaining the Parliamentary vote, still a large section of both Press and public were unanimous in condemning the Government for the violent measures which it had employed to suppress the women's deputation. Many compared the sending out of mounted police against a procession of unarmed women to the employment of Cossacks in Russia, and the _Liberal Daily Chronicle_ published a cartoon called "The London Cossack" which showed a portly policeman riding off with a trophy of ladies' hats.