Accordingly, man by man was ordered to leave and each in turn rose up with a brief phrase of refusal, after which the Sergeant-at-Arms with an officer approached and laid a hand on the recusant's shoulder.
Redmond, when his turn came, said: "As I regard the whole of these proceedings as unmitigated despotism, I beg respectfully to decline to withdraw." That was his maiden speech.

Having delivered it, "Mr.Redmond," says Hansard, "was by desire of Mr.Speaker removed by the Sergeant-at-Arms from the House." It was a strange beginning for one of the greatest parliamentarians of our epoch--and one of the greatest conservatives.
The whole bent of his mind was towards moderation in all things.
Temperamentally, he hated all forms of extravagant eccentricity; he loved the old if only because it was old; he had the keenest sense not only of decorum but of the essential dignity which is the best guardian of order.

Yet here he was committed to a policy which aimed deliberately at outraging all the established decencies--at disregarding ostentatiously all the usages by which an assembly of gentlemen had regulated their proceedings.
What is more, it was an assembly which Redmond found temperamentally congenial to him--an assembly which, apart from its relation to Ireland, he thoroughly admired and liked.

In 1896, when Irish members were fiercely in opposition to the Government, he concluded his description of Parliament with these words: "In the main, the House of Commons is, I believe, dominated by a rough-and-ready sense of manliness and fair-play.

Of course, I am not speaking of it as a governing body.