=Source.=--_The Times_, August 1.
Mr. Parnell and his special friends greatly distinguished
themselves in the House of Commons last night by the multiplicity
of the motions in committee on the South Africa Bill. The
Government adopted special means to wear out the tenacity of the
members who thus consume hour after hour, for it had arranged that
the House should sit until the work should be done, even if the
discussion should last till breakfast time. But it does injustice
to Mr. Parnell. He is the most misunderstood and most ill-used man
in the House of Commons. Such is the burden of the long letter from
him which we printed on Monday. He has been accused of trying to
stop public business by floods of irrelevant speech. He has been
charged with something like open disrespect for the authority of
Mr. Speaker. He has been suspected of a wish to make Irish members
intolerable, in the hope that weary Englishmen and Scotchmen would
bid them begone to enjoy the beatitudes of Home Rule. He has made
the Leader of the House, although the mildest of men, propose to
banish him to the penal settlement of silence, and the House has
done him the honour of framing two new rules to impede the flow of
his speech during the rest of the Session.... The incorrectness
of that accusation, he replies, is proved by the comparatively
small use he has made of almost boundless opportunities. If his
enemies speak of what he has done, he appeals to what he might
have done. Has he obstructed every clause of every Bill? Has he
even obstructed every Bill? Has he exhausted all the forms of the
House even yet? These questions oppress us with a sense of his
moderation. If he has done so much, he might have done so much
more! As most Bills have at least ten clauses, as most clauses
contain at least a hundred words, and as at least one amendment
might be moved after each word, Mr. Parnell could have opposed
each Bill with at least a thousand amendments, and he himself, Mr.
Biggar, and Mr. O'Donnell could each have delivered at least a
thousand speeches.