Monday, 6th February.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VIII, Issue 417, 8 April 1881, Page 5

Monday, 6th February.

The Pall Mall Gazette thus sketches Monday's debate on the second reading of the Coercion Bill : — " The state of nausea which the discussion of coercion now excites was strongly exemplified "by the fact that there was a regular clear* * ance from the House when Sir Rowland Blennerhassett rose. The member for Kerry does not always stimulate an exhausted audience, and under his address the House thinned still more. Mr. Synan accordingly bellowed in the House whose emptiness echoed drearily his stentorian tones ; and Mr. Redmond, another of the young men whom Mr. Parnell has gathered to his ranks, made a graceful and quiet speech ; while Mr. Stansfield was listened to with gTave attention by a small House, as in a tone of sincerity he urged the necessity of a comprehensive land bill. Then came Mr. Tottenham, in sharp contrast, with wild attacks upon the land League and the Home Rule members, describing the latter in the exuberance of his eloquence as the advocates of assassins. Mr. Arthur O'Connor made a vain attempt to stem this tempestuous torrent of eloquence, but without avail, and the turbid stream of high Conservative eloquence was allowed to flow on. Indeed, the speech was one of exultation over the at last prostrate bodies of the Land Leaguers. Mr. Wills performed beroxe an audience that would not be moved even to laughter, and Mr Inderwick was gently condemnatory of the Land League ; while Mr. Butt stated the case for the prosecution against Mr. Parnell with a repetition of the Ennis speech and other matter that has already passed into the annals of the ancient?. Only two Parnellites spoke — Mr. Uellingham, who was brief, and Mr. O'Donnell, who was lengthy. A lugubrious address by Mr. Macnaghten, an Ulster Conservative, suggested that the hon. member had erewhile occupied an honourable position as the guiding star of some Salem Chapel. Sir George Campbell was severe against the harshness of the bill and the procedure of the Government. Then, it being halfpast twelve, Mr. Schreiber, a Conservative member, moved an adjournment, and tee House found itself able to go home to bed at an astonishingly proper hour."