1880-1882] Home Rule ana Obstruction 243 



I feel nothing but joy. . . . Harry Allen's [letter] was 

 peculiarly nice from the moderation of the expressions. I 

 am very near at the end of all my answers. It is rather 

 disagreeable getting into the way of saying the same thing 

 to everybody, thought almost all I wrote to really cared. 



Josiah Wedgwood, of Leith Hill Place, had died on 

 March llth in the same year. The following letter was 

 written when my parents were paying their first visit there 

 after his death. 



LEITH HILL PLACE, Sunday [Dec., 1880]. 



I did not perceive that aunt Caroline was agitated on 

 seeing us; she talked cheerfully till we went to unpack. I 

 had a long talk with her after lunch, and F. was in very 

 good spirits and talk as long as he stayed. ... He is so full 

 of Wallace's affair 1 he has no time for his own, and has 

 concocted provisional letters to Gladstone and the Duke 

 of Argyll. The last I am sure he will send the first is not 

 quite certain. He is influenced by Huxley feeling so sure 

 that Gladstone would like to oblige him. 



[DOWN, February, 1881.] 



I think I never enjoyed anything so much in politics as 

 when the Speaker at last put his foot down on Wednesday 

 morning, 2 and all the more because it disappointed horrid 

 Mr Biggar and his papers and Blue books. I was out of 

 all patience with the Speaker and the Executive, but 

 Mrs Mulholland, who called here yesterday, said that the 

 reticence was preconcerted in order to give them plenty of 



1 A Civil List pension for Mr Wallace, which was bestowed on 

 January 7, 1881. On receiving a letter from Gladstone announcing 

 the fact my father wrote: " How extraordinarily kind of Mr Glad- 

 stone to find time to write under such circumstances. Good heavens ! 

 how pleased I am." Life and Letters of C. D., Vol. in., p. 228. 



2 This refers to the forty-one hours' sitting of the House of 

 Commons and the Speaker's so-called coup d'6tat. In order to 

 obstruct the Coercion Bill, the Home Rulers kept the House sitting 

 from Monday, February 7th, to Wednesday morning, February 9th, 

 and would have gone on talking for any conceivable length of time 

 had not the obstruction been ended by the Speaker putting the 

 Motion on his own authority. 



