administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely
necessary, and we protested against enacting for Ireland a criminal code
which was not to be applied to Great Britain. Our resistance might have
been more successful but for the manner in which the Nationalist members
conducted their opposition. When they began to obstruct--not that under
the circumstances we felt entitled to censure them for obstructing a
Bill dealing so harshly with their countrymen--we were obliged to
desist, and our experience of the stormy scenes of the summer of 1882
deepened our sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded
English members, scarcely making an exception in favour of those who
were most disposed to sympathize with them. Many and many a time when we
listened to their fierce cries, we seemed to hear in them the
battle-cries of the centuries of strife between Celt and Englishman from
Athenry to Vinegar Hill; many a time we felt that this rage and mistrust
were chiefly of England's making; and yet not of England's, but rather
of the overmastering fate which had prolonged to our own days the
hatreds and the methods of barbarous times:

hêmeis d' ouk aitioi esmen
Alla Zeus kai Moira kai êerophoitis Herinus.

So much of the session as the Crime Bill had spared was consumed by the
Arrears Bill, over which we had again a "crisis" with the House of
Lords. This was the third session that had been practically given up to
Irishmen. The freshness and force of the Parliament of 1880--a
Parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few
of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of
1880 had been realized. The Government had been anxious to legislate,
their majority had been ready to support them, but Ireland had blocked
the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the