MR. W. E. H. LECKY.
(Photo: Melhuish and Gale, Ltd., Pall Mall, W.)
The other change was this: "In old days," said Mr. Gladstone, "the House used to have an absolute control of bores." Few of the members took frequent part in the debates. Discussion seemed, by common consent, to be left mainly to a score or two of leaders. There were gentlemen who had been for long years representatives of important cities, who were never known to have opened their lips. I myself in my boyhood knew one highly respected member who, if I remember rightly, had sat for a county town for nearly fifty years, and whose sole contribution to the debates in Parliament, for all that period, had been the single sentence, "I second the motion!" It is widely different now. I suppose that now any member who has sat for a number of years, and never even made his maiden speech, is a rare exception. Although the gift of utterance is supposed to be very much less rare than once it was, yet the few only are able to speak really well. This, however, does not prevent members from the free expression of their opinions, because in print one speech does not look very much unlike another. In many cases in these days members are speaking with far less reference to the House than to the Press gallery. Their constituents expect them to speak, and like to see their names and remarks in the daily papers, however ruthlessly they may be abbreviated by the reporters. In former days a bore was never tolerated. After a very few sentences the House gave such unconcealed expression to its impatience, and the orator was interrupted by such a continuous roar of "Divide, divide!... 'vide!... 'vide!... 'vide!" that the stoutest-hearted, after a short effort, gave way, and the House was not afflicted with a wearying tide of commonplace, "in one weak, washy, everlasting flood." At present it is not always so. It is indeed but seldom that a member feels perfectly willing to bestow on his fatigued fellow-senators the whole amount of his tediousness; but I have, not infrequently, seen a member listen with the blandest smile of indifference to the torrent of interruptions which marred his oratory—and tire his audience into partial silence by leaving on their minds the conviction that he intended to say out what he had meant to say, so that the shortest way to get rid of him would be to let him maunder on to the end!
DEAN FARRAR IN HIS OLD CORNER IN THE GALLERY.
Reverting to the subject of strong language in the House, and again speaking of O'Connell, I asked Mr. Gladstone whether he had been present when the great demagogue had convulsed the House with laughter by his parody on Dryden's epigram on the three great poets, Homer, Virgil, and Milton. "Oh, yes," he answered. "I see him now before my mind's eye, as, with a broad gleam of amusement over his face, he kept looking up at Colonel Sibthorpe, the somewhat eccentric member for Lincoln, and then jotting down something in his notes. Colonel Sibthorpe, having been an officer in the army, was exempt from the then current convention of being close-shaven, and he was bearded like a pard. I cannot recall the exact epigram, but I remember the incident perfectly."
(Photo: Lawrence, Dublin.)
DANIEL O'CONNELL.