[296] Trevelyan's "Life of Macaulay," vol. ii. p. 76.
[297] "La France et L'Angleterre," par F. de Tassies. (Quoted in O'Connell's "Recollections," vol. i. p. 261.)
"Imitations zoologiques" have always been a popular but by no means the only method employed by members desirous of drowning the words of a tiresome speaker. John Rolle, the hero of the "Rolliad," promoted a "smoking and spitting party "to interrupt and annoy Burke.[298] In 1784, the latter told a number of youthful opponents who interrupted him with their howls that he could teach a pack of hounds to yelp with more melody and equal comprehension. Ten years before the O'Connell scene Brougham excited the House to uproar of a similarly puerile character. He remained calm and unmoved, however, and, when the bestial cries of his audience subsided for a moment, pleasantly observed that by a wonderful disposition of nature every animal had its peculiar mode of expressing itself, and that he was too much of a philosopher to quarrel with any of those modes--a remark which does not appear to have subdued the clamour to any appreciable extent.[299] A similar uproar which the Speaker was powerless to quell arose in 1872, when Sir Charles Dilke brought forward a motion to inquire into the manner in which the income and allowances of the Crown were spent.
[298] Thomas Moore's "Memoirs," vol. ii. p. 296.
[299] Miss Martineau's "History of the Peace," vol. ii. p. 381.
Members who are anxious to bring a debate to a close still have recourse to sound, crying, "'Vide! 'Vide!" in an earsplitting fashion, which occasionally evokes a rebuke from the Speaker. But there is seldom, nowadays, such a scene of violence as occurred in both Houses upon the dissolution of Parliament in April, 1831. The Commons indulged in a painful scene "of bellowing, and roaring, and gnashing of teeth, which it was almost frightful to look at," says Cockburn.[300] In the Upper House peers behaved no less childishly. Lord Mansfield doubled up his fist, elbowed Lord Shaftesbury into the Chair, and hooted Lord Brougham as he left the House.[301] Lord Lyndhurst, meanwhile, was threatening the Duke of Richmond with physical violence, and the uproar was only quelled by the arrival of the King.[302] One must not, of course, forget the notorious modern instance of ill manners, already described,[303] when, in 1893, members exchanged blows upon the floor of the Commons. This, however, is a painful exception, little likely to recur.