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."
The MacGregor retires to his Cave.
Mr. W-r. "Mon, if I hadna thocht he was jokin', I wad ha' gone mysel',—to be even wi' 'im!"
It may be singular, but so is the number of the friends. Cranborne, in one of his fiery speeches, made it clear just now that the Eldest Sons are divided on the question which General George Curzon, Quartermaster-General St. John Brodrick, and the late Army (now gone to another place) made their own. This defection from within not made up by sustentation from without. Joseph, having got a little mixed between what he said on Coleridge peerage case, and the exact reverse put forward by him with equal confidence on the Selborne case, judiciously absented himself to-night. Courtney also absent. Prince Arthur sat ominously silent on Front Bench, whilst Dick Webster backed up Squire of Malwood in denouncing position assumed by General George and Quartermaster-General St. John. As for the Army, multitudinously alluded to as "the Hon. William Waldegrave Palmer, commonly called Viscount Wolmer, now Earl of Selborne," it was withdrawn, interned as garrisons are at particular crises of civic life. House gladly ordered issue of new writ for West Edinburgh. Constitution remains unreformed, and William Waldegrave—to quote with slight variation from the appropriate source of tombstone literature—
Called hence by early doom,