ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
Monday, February 17th.—On the motion for the rejection of the Bill to relieve Ministers from the necessity of re-election, Mr. PEMBERTON-BILLING incidentally revealed the horrifying fact that he has compiled another Black Book, containing a full list of the PRIME MINISTER'S election pledges. They do not quite come up to the notorious figure of 47,000; but they total 1,211, which seems enough to go on with, and they are all "cross-referenced."
More serious, from the Government's point of view, was the criticism of some of their regular supporters. Lord WINTERTON, speaking as an old Member of the House—though he still looks youthful enough to be its "baby," as he was fifteen years ago—affirmed the value of by-elections as a gauge for public opinion; Major GRAEME, one of the new Coalitionists, thought it would be a mistake to part with a means of testing the record of a Ministry which the War has "swollen to the size of a Sanhedrim."
As the soft answers of the ATTORNEY-GENERAL—whom the late Mr. ROOSEVELT would have probably termed "pussy-footed"—failed to quell the rising storm, the LEADER OF THE HOUSE bowed before it and offered to agree to the insertion in the Bill of a time-limit.
Something had evidently annoyed Mr. DEVLIN. Whether it was the intimation that the new Housing Bill was not to apply to Ireland (which has had similar legislation for years past), or that in future the out-of-work donation in that country would be confined to persons possessing more or less right to it, or (most probably) that an interfering Saxon had announced his intention of moving a "Call of the House" in order to get the recalcitrant Sinn Feiners to take up their Parliamentary duties, I do not know. At any rate the Nationalist seized the opportunity of delivering a general attack upon the Government of such overwhelming irrelevance that Mr. WHITLEY, the least sarcastic of men, was driven to remark, "I think the honourable Member is under the impression that this is last week."
