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.