At this stage it was found expedient to drop the subject; adjournment not further resisted.
Business done.—Budget Bill dealt with on Report stage.
Thursday.—With that austerity that since Stuart times has marked relations of House of Commons with royalty Mr. Hogge is known at Westminster simply as the Member for East Edinburgh, a position he with characteristic modesty accepts. But blood, especially royal blood, like murder, will out. Lineal descendant of one of the oldest dynasties in the world’s history, Mr. Hogge cannot be expected always and altogether to be free from ancestral influence. Something of the hauteur of ’ogge, King of Bashan (or, as some records have it, og) is discerned in his attitude and manner when, throned on corner seat below Gangway, he occasionally deigns to direct the Prime Minister in the way he should go.
Such opportunity presented itself in connection with meeting of Conference which through the Parliamentary week has centred upon Buckingham Palace the attention of mankind. With respect to palaces Mr. Hogge is by family association an expert.
“Why Rookery?” Miss Betsey Trotwood sharply asked David Copperfield when he casually mentioned his mother’s postal address.
“Why Buckingham Palace?” asked Mr. Hogge, bending severe glance on Treasury Bench whence the Premier had judiciously fled.
St. Stephen’s, which houses the Member for East Edinburgh, is also a royal palace. Why then was not the Conference held within its walls, instead of under the roof of what he loftily alluded to as “the domestic Palace”?
This and much more, with covert references to machinations of the two Front Benches, Mr. Hogge wanted to know.
The Prime Minister, uneasily conscious of the coming storm, had, as mentioned, discreetly disappeared. As an offering to righteous indignation he left behind him on the Treasury Bench the body of Attorney-General. That astute statesman avoided difficulty and personal disaster by meekly undertaking to lay before the Prime Minister the views so eloquently and pointedly set forth by the hon. Member.
Mr. Hogge graciously assented to this course, and what at the outset looked like threatening incident terminated.