ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
Extracted from the Diary of Toby, M.P.
Ritchie Redivivus!
(From a sketch picked up near the Front Opposition Bench.)
House of Commons, Monday, May, 27.—Ritchie back to-day, after long absence. Changed address from Tower Hamlets to Croydon. Waiting to be called to table by Speaker, had opportunity of hearing long debate round Bill promoted by London County Council. Ritchie, as President of Local Government Board in last Ministry, made London County Council possible. Happy thought to play him in, as it were, with County Council debate.
"Been out of it nearly three years now, Toby," said Ritchie, when, one of a score of old members, I went to shake hands and bid him welcome; "just the same old place; perhaps a little duller at the moment. What they want is new blood, or, perhaps, better still, a re-infusion of old blood. Can't give them a new County Council Bill; must try and make them somehow sit up."
These thoughts pressed upon him as he stood at table signing Roll of Parliament after having been sworn in. Brought his hat with him, as new Members do, since, as yet, they have no peg to hang it on. Placed it on table whilst he signed the Roll. Passing on to be introduced to Speaker, observed with a start that there were two hats on the table. Odd. Was sure he had brought only one. Blessed is the man who makes two blades of grass grow where formerly only one peeped forth. Possibly analagous benison for a man who, planting one hat down on a table, looks and behold there are two. Happy omen; make the most of it; wouldn't do to go off with two hats. House sure to remark it. Besides, how could he shake hands with the Speaker holding a hat in either hand? Next best thing to select the newest; did so with pretty air of abstraction; advanced one step between table and Treasury Bench on way to Speaker's chair when he felt firm grip on his elbow, and a well known voice in his ear.
"Give me neither Ritchies nor poverty, but do leave me my hat."
It was the voice of the Squire of Malwood.
"Oh, I beg your pardon. How d'ye do?" said Ritchie, hurriedly returning the Squire's Sunday hat, and taking up his own, which had suffered the rigours of a wet and windy nomination day.
House cheered and laughed. Knatchbull-Hugessen gravely shook his head. "That's all very well," said he. "But a man who would pander to the lowest instincts of humanity by clearing the way for parish councils, would do anything."
Business done.—Another night's talk round Welsh Disestablishment Bill.
Tuesday.—Prospect of hearing John William move adjournment of House over Derby Day, and John Leng reply on other side, sufficed to crowd benches. Such encounter of wits rarely delights mankind these degenerate days. Such lightness of touch! Such gleaming attack! Such brilliant defence! In short, such badinage! Such persiflage! Old Members recall earlier conflicts in same field. Young Members look back on clever speech made by Elcho in moving adjournment one year, capped by equally brilliant speech when, in the following Session, he seconded Wilfrid Lawson on the negative course. This and all else would be excelled when John William began to jest, and Leng made light reply.
Cromwell. "Brother Joseph, Brother Joseph, for a Roundhead I find thee in strange company!"
"But what a pity it is that we cannot revive Oliver Cromwell in the flesh, and not only in marble."
Mr. Chamberlain's Speech at Birmingham, May 29.
This was natural expectation from reputation of these famous wits. In dreary conversation that followed there was one solitary flicker of humour; it was discovered by anxious searcher in the circumstance that the whole business was utterly, hopelessly prosaic. There wasn't a laugh in it from beginning to end. House begins to think it has had enough of this elaborate annual tourney of humour. Next year, if motion for adjournment over Derby Day is made, it will be better to have question put forthwith, and so divide. Another experience like the exceedingly bad half-hour endured this afternoon is more than should fall to the lot of a single generation.
Business done.—House agreed by 221 votes against 174 that it could not afford to take a holiday. Straightway proceeded to waste remainder of sitting in vain repetition of argument round clauses of Welsh Disestablishment Bill.
Thursday.—Well for Prince Arthur he chanced to be absent to-night when Cap'en Tommy Bowles hauled alongside Silomio and raked him fore and aft. Kenyon, who knows more than you think when you hear him speak, tells me it is pretty certain when the next Government is formed Silomio will have his choice of succeeding either Edward Grey or Sydney Buxton. Neither office is of Cabinet rank. But with the chief in the Lords, a statesman of Silomio's ability and sagacity can make and keep a position equal in importance and influence to some more highly placed. No one will deny that the promotion will have been well earned. The Sheffield Knight has, perhaps, been more prominently associated with the conduct of Colonial affairs than with those nominally directed by Lord Kimberley with the assistance of Edward Grey. This is a view strengthened by the circumstance of the honourable title conferred upon him by the emissaries from Swaziland. Actually, Silomio knows quite as much of Foreign Affairs as he does of Colonial.
To-night, on Vote on Account, he concentrated his attention on the action of the Foreign Office. Surveying its operations from China to Peru, he was constrained unreservedly to condemn them. Everywhere the British Minister had truckled to the foreigner. The flag of England, which the emigrants in the Mayflower proudly carried with them even in their exile, was dragged through every gutter of foreign capitals.
"There never was a time," said Silomio, "when this country was so isolated among the nations of Europe."
This grand speech echoed through nearly empty House. Prince Arthur and his colleagues on Front Opposition Bench, as usual, paid their distinguished colleague the highest compliment. They knew he would say the right thing in the right way, at the right time. Whilst he kept the gate no traitor could pass, no harm befall a beloved country. So, with one accord, they went off, leaving Casabianca Silomio to tread alone the deck, burning with his eloquence.
On the benches behind sat only Tomlinson, who sometimes wishes Prince Arthur had a little more of Silomio's go; Knatchbull-Hugessen who doesn't think the Knight is quite the model of a country gentleman, but likes to hear him shout at the Government; and Cap'en Tommy Bowles, wearing his best Sunday ducks in honour of a sultry day that reminds him faintly of breathless moments spent in the Forties in the Bight of Benin.
An Authority on Heraldry!
(Mr. Eg-rt-n All-n.)
Silomio sat down and mopped the shining top of his patriotic head with a handkerchief hemmed in Germany. The Cap'en, catching the Chairman's eye with the hook that serves in place of the strong right hand cut off by the flashing blade of the Moor whose felucca Tommy was boarding under the impression it was a ferry-boat, sprang to his feet. "Unthinking diatribes," he called Silomio's noble speech; lamented the effect upon foreign powers of its delivery "by a responsible leader of the party"; and said much else that would have shocked the House had Members chanced to be present. Prince Arthur, who so acutely felt, and so bitterly resented, George Russell's recent sneer at the Patriot Knight, was spared the anguish of the moment by that carefully concerted movement which, happily, calls Silomio's colleagues off the Front Bench when he is about to discourse on Foreign Affairs.
Business done.—Vote on Account agreed to.
Friday.—House met to wind up business previous to Whitsun recess. Alpheus Cleophas, always considerate, been thinking over ways of enjoying the holiday. Struck him nothing would be nicer than free admission for M.P.'s and their friends to witness process of vivisection. Put the matter before Home Secretary in his genial way. Asquith very sorry, but has no power to give the desired admission. Alpheus Cleophas a little depressed, but went off with the consciousness that he had at least done his best.
"There is no enterprise in these people, Toby," he complained. "We in London are much behind the age. We haven't here what in Paris is, I believe, called the Mor-gew: a nice, quiet place to turn into when you are out holiday-making. I have my own resources. When house is shut and I can't go about the basement and cellars smelling out the oil lamps, I sit on edge of fountain in Trafalgar Square and sniff its balmy waters. Everyone not equally independent. If we had only about the parks and in the thoroughfares places open to the respectable public where they might see vivisection going on, we should be a happier nation."
Business done.—House adjourned for the Whitsun recess. Back again June 10.