It was a rule which allowed the House to declare a disagreement but not an agreement. It allowed a majority to non-concur, but forbade it to concur! A New York _Herald_ correspondent characterized Mr. Reed’s rule perfectly when he declared that it realized the Irishman’s dream of a gun which should fire so as to hit the object if it was a deer and miss it if it was a cow! It was on Saturday, the 24th of February, that Mr. Reed reported his rule, and on Monday it was taken up. Only seven days then remained of the session. The storm which burst over the rule when it was read on Monday was quite worthy of its audacity. It was a “monstrous proposition,” said Mr. Carlisle. “It is a fraud on parliamentary law; a fraud on all that is just and fair in our politics; it is revolutionary,” said Mr. Cox. Mr. Reed listened placidly to it all and finally closed the discussion by declaring coolly that he himself considered the procedure he was introducing as “forcible,” that he should never be in favor of such a rule save in a “great emergency,” but that such an emergency he considered to be at hand. The country demanded a revision. The Democrats had defeated the House bill by a systematic course of obstruction. The Senate bill was not satisfactory to business men; it was unconstitutional to adopt it, but something must be done to relieve distress. There was nothing to do but revise the Senate bill “in the quiet of a conference committee.” The rule was adopted after nearly a day’s debate by a vote of 129 to 22. But the Democrats were not through yet. They raised the constitutional question—was the House of Representatives to waive its right to originate revenue measures? Never. The discussion precipitated lacked sincerity, for leading Democrats had already testified to their willingness to let the Senate bill go through as it stood. Mr. Haskell finally stopped debates by a resolution which was carried. It turned the constitutional question over to the Tariff Conference for decision. The manœuvre was adroit. It simply meant that if the Tariff Conference did not result satisfactorily to the high protectionist members, they had the plea of unconstitutionality to fall back on, or as somebody put it, “If pig-iron goes up, the amendment of the Senate will be constitutional; if pig-iron goes down, it will be unconstitutional.”