Business done.—Budget Bill in Commons.
Thursday.—All the blood of his great predecessor in spoliation, Henry the Eighth, just now swelled in the bosom of James Stuart Allanson Tudor Picton. Prince Arthur responsible for the flood. Question about meeting announced to be held in Mid-Tipperary next Sunday. Prince Arthur has, it seems, prohibited it. John Morley wants to know why? There was, he says, public meeting held in same place last month, addressed by English Members; that not proclaimed. What was the difference between meeting addressed by Irish Members, and another by English Members, that one should be taken and the other left?
Pease (with Honour).
"The difference is," said Prince Arthur, speaking with embarrassed air, as if the distinction was dragged out of him, "that the result of the meeting addressed by Irish Members was to produce intimidation, whilst the result of the other was, I should say, nil."
If James Stuart Allanson Tudor Picton had only lived in the times of his great predecessor, and wielded his power, Prince Arthur would forthwith have been conducted to Tower Hill, and shortened by a head. Why he (James, &c.) was at this meeting at Mid-Tipperary last month! He, standing on a butter-tub, had addressed the men of Tipperary; the echo of his eloquence still filled the dales, whilst the hills reverberated with the cheers of the men of Tipperary. For this insolent hireling of a Coercionist Government to speak in tones of studied slight of such a demonstration was more than J. S. A. T. P. could stand. If our two giants, John O'Connor and Henry Pease had not joined hands and held him back, gore would have sprinkled the precincts of the Treasury Bench. As it was, the subject dropped, and House proceeded to discuss Budget Bill.
Business done.—A good lead.
Friday.—House adjourned for holidays. "When we come back," says Old Morality, "we must really begin work. Playtime up to now; left most of the work over; must buckle to. We've been in some danger, and there may be more ahead. Why are persons sometimes killed by leaning over beer-vats? Because vats, when beer has been made, contain large quantities of carbonic acid gas, produced by the vinous fermentation of the beer; and when a man incautiously leans over a beer-vat and inhales the carbonic acid, he is killed thereby. It is, of course, not quite the same in respect of spirits. Still, when a Chancellor of Exchequer has clapped on sixpence a gallon on whiskey, it is as well for his colleagues to avoid looking a Scotch hogshead or an Irish puncheon in the face. Au plaisir, cher Toby. Come along, Jackson!"
The two Right Honourables go off together, Jackson evidently turning over in his mind Old Morality's observations on the beer-vat.
"A wonderful man," he says, "his mind stored with odd bits of information, which he draws upon for enlightenment upon ordinary events of daily life. Don't exactly see, though, how he rolled in that beer-vat. Must think it over during the Recess."