ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
Extracted from the Diary of Toby, M.P.
House of Commons, Monday, May 20.—James Galloway Weir is a sore man the night. Ross and Cromarty hide their diminished head—or should it be heads?—before the illuminated mountain tops of Inverness-shire. The MacGregor has done him at last, done him hopelessly. Since the present Parliament met, he and The MacGregor have run pretty evenly, neck and neck in race to show what Scotland can do in this way when it concentrates its mighty mind on the effort. In former times Ireland had monopoly of the Crank as he was returned to Parliament. Scotch Members preserved traditional reputation of their country as the home of dour-headed businesslike men. Weir standing alone would have sufficed to tear this fable to tatters. The MacGregor unaided would have confounded the tradition. The combination of talent was irresistible, overpowering in its force of conviction.
Between these eminent men there has been, from the first, a feeling of generous rivalry. The MacGregor, as befitted the riper genius, has been more successful in concealing it. Whenever he has put a question about the Crofters, Weir has managed to drop in with supplementary inquiry. His name appearing in the report, watchful Scotia would take note that The MacGregor was not the only one of her sons who, in a foreign land, cared for her interests. The MacGregor, on the contrary, not less loftily because without apparent design, ignored Weir. There is reason to believe he did not regard with fullest measure of appreciation his intellectual capacity, his business aptitude, or his parliamentary manner.
"A puir creature!" he said, one night, staring straight up at the gaslit roof. There was no one up there at the moment, and as this happened to be the night when Weir had eleven questions on the paper, by way of showing his want of confidence in the Government, and was approaching the ninth with ever deepening chest notes, there is too much reason to fear that at that moment the Member for Inverness-shire was not unconscious of the existence of the Member for Ross and Cromarty.
James Galloway's boot-issuing and blood-curdling tones; his tragic reiteration of the phrase, "Is the right hon. gentleman a Weir?" The solemn sweep of his arm as he places the reluctant pince-nez on his disputatious nose; his stare of haughty surprise when Lowlanders opposite titter at his inquiry about the lost handle of the parish pump in outraged Pitlochrie; his habit of turning up at unexpected places on either side of the House below the Gangway—these things are unique in their way. In the aggregate they would, save for The MacGregor, have placed him on an unapproachable pinnacle. After to-night he will reign alone. The other King of the Bedlam Brentford has abdicated. But evermore there will rest over James Galloway the chill shadow of the mighty triumph with which his rival closed his public career.
Nothing in the parliamentary life of The MacGregor became him so well as its quittance. The artful way in which he led the Squire of Malwood up to confession of intent with respect to the Crofters Bill; the Squire's humble plea to wait till Thursday; the MacGregor's stern response, "That is not good enough for me;" then his swinging march down the Gangway (almost you could hear the pibroch playing); his halt before the Mace; his stately bow to the Speaker; the march resumed; the fresh halt at the Bar; another sweeping obeisance (again fancy feigned the faint sound of the distant pibroch), and the MacGregor was o'er the border, and awa'.
"A puir daft body," said James Galloway Weir, his musing sight, by strange coincidence, also fixed on the ceiling.
Business done.—The MacGregor shakes the dust of the House of Commons from off his feet. In disordered state of things that followed, paralysed Government escaped defeat in Committee on Welsh Disestablishment Bill by narrow majority of nine.
Tuesday.—Surely never was such a place in the world as House of Commons for bifurcations. Within memory of man there was a time when, of two sides of the political highway, Liberals trod one, Conservatives paced the other. Now House is broken up into half a dozen parties, each with its infinitude of sections. Most depressing and disappointing development of this tendency appears to-night. The Eldest-Son Party is just bereft of one of its most active members by Wolmer's accession to Earldom. General George Curzon, whose forces, on full muster, counted two, is now reduced, on Queen's Birthdays and other State occasions, to reviewing St. John Brodrick, seul. Force of habit still strong, and, when speaking to-night, he made House acquainted with the views on constitutional question which "I and my friends hold."
