ABSTRACT
Though a winter when the number of Irish Coercion arrests was steadily mounting was no very cheerful time for Radicals, hope inevitably attached itself to the meeting of Parliament for the 1882 Session. Actually the Session was to prove a gloomy and almost fruitless one. Opening with a renewed Government failure to persuade the Commons majority to let Bradlaugh have his seat, it rapidly saw the development of a serious dispute between the Cabinet and the Lords. After some little argument, nevertheless, two Cabinet Radicals apparently agreed that the 1883 Session would best be devoted to a fairly modest programme. It was, of course, plain that if there could be a clearance of those “arrears” of legislation which had been allowed to accumulate owing to Parliament’s great preoccupation with Ireland in 1881 and 1882, the 1884 Session could be more conveniently earmarked for a great plan of Parliamentary Reform.
