[Sidenote: Technicalities.]
I despair of ever being able to make this matter clear to an outsider;
and, indeed, to be quite honest, I am not always sure that I understand
the affair myself. It will probably be sufficient for my purpose if I
say that the chairman has to put an amendment in such a way that
sometimes you find you are really precluded from voting on the direct
question which you wish to challenge. You are within the ring-fence of a
technical rule, which compels you to fight your issue there and not one
inch outside of it. This often means that questions are raised in the
most indirect way--that you seem to be voting for one thing while you
really mean another, and that if you do not vote that way, you cannot
vote any other. So it happened on this occasion. And we drifted about
for the best way of raising the question of the presence of the Irish
members, and the Government were for a while in a state of absolute and
painful uncertainty. Then came one of those desultory conversations on
points of order, in which so large a body as the House of Commons cannot
shine--one man suggesting one method, one man another; half-a-dozen
different methods proposed in as many minutes by half-a-dozen different
members.
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