VISIT TO THE DOG-STAR.
"Take care of the plank, Sir," I said, as my esteemed master lightly skipped across the gangway, marshalling a well-grown youth carrying a scythe; "we don't have many visitors here. One who looked in the other day slipped his foot, fell over, and we've never seen him since. Listening intently, watch in hand, we heard a slight thud, and have reason to believe he dropped on Jupiter. It was useful to us, seeing that, by use of a well-known formula, we were able to reckon our precise distance from that planet. For him, I fancy, it must have been inconvenient."
"Are you serious, TOBY?" said Mr. Punch, stepping with added caution.
"No, Sir, I'm not. This," I said, waving my hand with graceful and comprehensive gesture around the orb where I am temporarily located, "this is Sirius."
"Ah, I see," said Mr. P., glad to find himself with his foot on our native heath; "I want to present you to an old friend, whom, I am afraid, you have sometimes misused. TIME, this is TOBY, M.P., a humble but faithful member of my terrestrial suite. I am showing the young fellow round, TOBY, and we looked in on you, hearing that you had a Parliament that should serve as a model for the firmament."
"I am afraid," observed TIME, whittling a piece of stick with his scythe, "that we may have looked in at a wrong season. As far as I can judge from a consideration of the temperature, and a glance round your landscape, we are now at Midsummer—in the dog days, if I may so put it without offence. Of course your legislators would not be in Town just now, sweltering at work that might as well be performed in winter weather, when, regarded as a place of business or residence, Town has attractions superior to those of the country." "Ah, young fellow," I said, perhaps a little sharply, not relishing his somewhat round-about way of putting things, "when you are as old as me or my esteemed master, you will not be so cock-sure of things. Our Parliamentary Session begins on the threshold of Spring; we stop in Town hard at work, through the pleasantest months of the year; we toil through Summer nights, see August out, and, somewhere about the first week in September, when the days are growing short, the air is chill, and Autumn gets ready to usher in Winter, we go off to make holiday."
"Dear me, dear me!" cried Mr. P., "how very sad. How deliberately foolish. We manage things much better than that down in our tight little Earth. When we take that in turn, you will find, my good TIME, that we burrow at our legislative work through the Winter months, getting it done so as to leave us free to enjoy the country in the prime of Spring, and amid the wealth of Summer. But come along, TOBY, let's get on to your House."
"It will be no use going now," said TIME, holding up his hour-glass; "it is five o'clock; the working day is practically over, and we shall find these sensible dogs travelling off to take a turn in the park, or pay a round of visits in search of the culinary receptacle that cheers, but does not intoxicate."
"Wrong again, young Cock-sure," I said; "we shall just find our house of Commons settling down to the business of the night. We begin about four o'clock in the afternoon, and peg away till any hour to-morrow morning that one or two Members please. It is true we have a rule which enjoins the suspension of business at midnight; but instead of suspending business we can (and do) suspend the Rule, and sometimes sit all night."
"Ah!" said Mr. Punch, gravely shaking his head, "we manage things much better than that at Westminster."
Got my two friends with some difficulty across Palace Yard, eyed suspiciously by the police-dogs on duty. One concentrated his attention on Mr. Punch's dorsal peculiarity.
"We have strict orders from the Sergeant-at-Arms," he said, "to examine all parcels carried by strangers."
"That's not a parcel," I said, hurriedly, and taking him on one side, succinctly explained the personal peculiarity of my esteemed Master. "Humph!" said the police-dog. "Exactly," I responded, and he let us pass on, though evidently with lingering apprehension that he was allowing a valuable clue to slip out of his hands, as it were.
"Wait here a moment," I said, "till I get an order for your admission."
Absent only a few minutes; when I got back terrible commotion; Mr. P.'s friend was in the hands of the Police; they had attempted to take his scythe from him, and he had smartly rapped one on the head with his hour-glass.
"I've carried it a million years," he said, swinging the scythe with practised hand, till he made a clean sweep of the police-dogs.
"Make it a couple of millions, whilst you are at it, young man," said a sarcastic police-dog.
With some difficulty calmed him; explained that no one, not even a Member, was permitted to enter House with a scythe, or other lethal weapon. Only exception made once a year, when Hon. Members, moving and seconding Address, are allowed to carry property-swords, which generally get between their legs. TIME partially mollified at last, consented to leave scythe behind chair of door-keeper, where the late TOM COLLINS used to secrete his gingham-umbrella.
"It seems to me," he said, "that the public are treated in this place worse than jackals. Hustled from pillar to post, suspected of unnamed crimes, grudged every convenience, and generally regarded as intolerable intruders."
"Ah," said Mr. P., "we manage things much better at Westminster."
"Order! Order!" cried an angry voice, and Mr. P. and his companion were within an ace of being trundled out of the gallery, where strangers are permitted to see and hear whatever is possible from their position—and it is not much.
"What are they talking about?" asked TIME, in guarded whisper, being, by this time, completely cowed.
"They haven't reached public business yet," I explained. "Been for last two hours debating a private Bill, providing that the pump-handle in the village of Plumberry shall be chained at eight o'clock at night. The Opposition want it done at nine."
"Well, I suppose they know all about it," said TIME. "Probably been down to Plumberry, examined into bearing of whole question, and formed their opinion accordingly?"
"Nothing of the sort; some of them don't even know where Plumberry is—never heard its name before this Pump-handle business came up. Don't even now wait in House to hear question, debated by Members with local knowledge. You see only twenty or thirty Members in their places. But, when bell rings for division, four hundred will troop in, and their vote will settle the question whether Plumberry shall be privileged to pump water as late as nine o'clock, or whether at eight the handle shall be chained."
So it turned out: In House of four hundred and seventy-nine Members Bill was read a second time by majority of twenty-three. Division occupied twenty minutes, which, with debate, appropriated two of the most precious hours of the sitting.
Mr. P. narrowly escaped expulsion, attention being awkwardly concentrated upon him, owing to the exuberance of his delight in recollection of how much better these things are managed at Westminster.
After this, public business was approached, beginning with questions. Of these there were a list of eighty, the large majority on exceedingly trivial circumstances. Nine-tenths of them could have been answered in a sentence by the Minister addressed, supposing the Member had dropped him a private note, or crossed the floor of the House, to speak to him. TIME openly contemptuous at such a way of doing business, more especially when, on question which appeared on printed paper having been answered, half-a-dozen Members sprang up from different parts of House, and volleyed forth supplementary interrogations. Explained to him things used to be worse when questions were propounded viví voce, and at length.
"Now," I said, not liking Mr. P.'s crowing over us, "the SPEAKER will not allow the terms of a question to be recited. They appear on printed paper, and are taken as read."
"Then," queried TIME, "what are these Members putting questions 'arising,' they say, 'out of the answer just given? They don't spare a syllable, and take up five times as much of the Sitting as Members who put their questions on the Paper, and are not allowed to read them. You don't mean to say that such a transparent evasion of the rule is permitted?"
"It looks very like it," said Mr. P.; "but it's not at all the sort of thing that would be permitted in our House of Commons. We make Rules, and the Speaker sees that they are obeyed in the spirit, as well as in the letter."
By the time questions were over, following on the prelude of private business, the evening was getting on. Members evidently tired out; had crowded in to vote on the Pump-handle question; sat in serried rows during the squabbles of question-time; and as soon as business was actually reached, House swiftly emptied, leaving about a score of Members. TIME more than ever distracted. Mr. P. increasingly perky.
"Ho! ho!" he said, rubbing his hands, "I don't wonder at this Star going to the Dogs. Stop till you come over to Westminster, TIME, dear boy, and we'll show you how public business should be carried on."
Explain to them that House is now in Committee on a Bill that had at earlier stages occupied some months of the Session, practically the greater portion of its working time. Now Session drawing to a close; agreed on both sides that it is too late to conclude Bill this Session; will be dropped after another night or two; Members knowing this, do not think it worth while to give up more time to Bill. Next Session it will be brought in again, and if the Government have better luck, and get earlier stages through in less time, there will be a chance of it passing.
"What!" shrieked TIME, forgetting where he was, "you don't mean to say that after devoting nearly a whole Session to a measure, laboriously shaping it up to a certain stage, you chuck away all your work because the Almanack says it's August? Why don't you, when you meet again in February, take the Bill up at the stage you dropped it? Why don't you—"
Here our friend's observations were brought to a sudden close. TIME was, as Mr. P. subsequently remarked, reduced to the status of a half-Timer. Angry cries of "Order! Order!" broke in on his unpremeditated speech. Two attendants, approaching him on either flank, seized him, and led him forth under the personal direction of the Sergeant-at-Arms. Mr. P., following his friend, and endeavouring from the top of the staircase to assure him that, "we manage these things better at Westminster," was promptly taken into custody, and led forth beyond the precincts, a combination of circumstances that interrupted and, indeed, as far as my friends were concerned, finally closed what was beginning to promise to prove an agreeable and instructive evening.
Business Done.—Mr. Punch and another Stranger expelled from the Gallery, and TOBY's narrative completed.