Calculation on this occasion somewhat astray. Rather hard to sit up all the way through the Squire's speech; an hour and a half long; bristling with figures; mellifluous with millions, throbbing with thousands. The Squire is in peculiar degree dependent for success upon mood of his audience. In crowded House, Members cheering, laughing, or, if you please, jeering and howling, the Squire improves with every five minutes of his Speech. To-night House not a quarter full; those present depressed with consciousness that no real fight meant; Mr. G. sat it out with some intervals of suspicious quietude. HENRY FOWLER also faithful found; sitting with folded arms waiting for the time when a new Chancellor of the Exchequer shall find opening made for him on a newly-arranged Treasury Bench.
Only JOKIM really listened; nervous, restless, murmuring comment, muttering contradiction, clutching at himself with strange gestures reminiscent of hereditary instinct to rend his garments in moments of tribulation. That was something in recompense for the meditations of yesterday morning. But as one swallow does not make a summer, neither does one Minister, however unhappy under criticism, make an audience. JOKIM followed with a speech scrupulously measured as to length by that of the Squire's; through the dead unhappy night the rain of talk fell on the roof, and everyone was glad when midnight, slowly coming, struck.
Business done.—Budget Resolutions agreed to.
Tuesday.—Small Holdings Bill through Committee. Last clause added amid buzz of admiration from a not too full House.
HAMLEY looked on in rapt admiration.
JESSE COLLINGS rose up and called CHAPLIN blessed.
"Not at all," said CHAPLIN, blushing; "as my friend TOOLE says from the deck of the Houseboat, anyone could do it."
"The fact is, TOBY," CHAPLIN whispered to me a little later, as we sat on the Terrace sharing a bottle of gingerbeer imbibed through a couple of straws, "I've really done a clever thing, only those fellows don't quite see it. Here we've been for a week pegging away at this Bill, bargaining and bickering. Sometimes I've yielded a trifle to the Opposition; sometimes I haven't. But it's pretty much all the same in the end. The Act will look very well in the Statute Book, and I hope will help us at the General Election. But as far as practical use goes, I have sometimes laughed when I look round the Committee and see Members seriously discussing the thing. Just before the Bill was printed, Prince ARTHUR asked me when I proposed the Act should come into operation. 'When are you going to have the General Election?' I asked, by way of reply. Prince ARTHUR said he couldn't exactly tell at the moment. 'Very well,' I said; 'let us put it this way. If you're going to dissolve at the end of June, the Act may as well come into operation as soon as it receives Royal Assent. But if you postpone Election over Autumn, better fix date for Act coming into force on the first of January. 'What d'you mean?' asked ARTHUR. 'I mean just this. If this Bill's to help us at the General Election, we mustn't give time for people to find it out.' 'Um!' said ARTHUR, and he can put a good deal of meaning into the observation."
Business done.—Small Holdings Bill in Committee.