Among subsequent speakers, Mr. Brace (Lab., _Glamorgan, S._) said that if the King had interfered the Labour party must have made his action an issue at the next elections. If the two paragraphs had been maintained, that party would have overthrown the Government. Mr. Bonar Law contested the charge made against the Opposition leaders by the First Lord of the Admiralty, and, reading out Lord Morley's explanation, declared that every member of the Cabinet was in the same position as the War Minister. Eventually the third reading was carried by 329 to 251.
In the House of Lords, also, the resignations and Lord Morley's position were discussed, but without much fresh enlightenment. Lord Morley stated that when the War Minister showed him the two paragraphs, he did not perceive, nor did he yet perceive, that they differed in spirit or substance from the preceding paragraphs. Further explanations were promised for next day, and, incidentally, Earl Roberts appealed to Peers and people to end the mischievous and dangerous assertions that the Army was being made the tool of a party. No man alive, he said, could seduce the Army in that way. Next day, in reply to a vehement attack on the Government by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, Lord Morley explained that Colonel Seely had resigned the second time in order that it might not appear that any Minister had made a bargain, and he himself had had no share in sending the letter as a reply to General Gough's request, of which he was unaware. Sir Edward Grey and the Prime Minister had taken the same view of the paragraphs, when taken with the rest of the letter, as himself. Notable speeches were made by Lord Methuen--to the effect that the Army would do its duty in any case--and by Earl Loreburn, who appealed to all parties to facilitate a settlement. The Marquess of Lansdowne thought the new Army order would not make matters clearer, and the Marquess of Crewe mentioned that the Royal Irish Constabulary, and Afridis in Indian frontier wars, were never asked to serve against men of their own country or race respectively.
Amid all these shocks it was a comparatively trifling matter that the Arms proclamation was invalidated for a time by the result of Hunter _v._ Coleman, an action brought by a firm of Belfast gunsmiths at the Belfast Assizes against the Collector of Customs of the port for detaining arms consigned to the plaintiffs at Hamburg on December 18, 1913. The sympathies of the jury were obviously with the plaintiffs, and the Attorney-General described the trial as a "political farce."