Monday, August 6th.—This being Bank Holiday and the first fine day after a week's downpour, Members for the most part stayed away from Westminster. Some, it is charitably supposed, have gone to look after their allotments. Others, it is believed, have been kept away by a different reason. The taxicab-drivers, men constitutionally averse from extortion, have refused to enter the railway-station yards so long as the companies persist in exacting from them a whole penny for the privilege. Consequently some of our week-ending legislators are reported to be interned at Waterloo and Paddington, sitting disconsolately upon their portmanteaux. As an appeal to the Board of Trade elicited nothing more from Mr. G. ROBERTS than a disclaimer of personal responsibility, it is expected that redress will be sought from the Taxi-cabinet.
Mr. HENDERSON'S dual personality continues to arouse curiosity. There was some justification for Mr. KING'S inquiry whether he went to Petrograd as a Ministerial Jekyll or a Labourist Hyde. Mr. BONAR LAW assured the House that on this occasion at least Mr. HENDERSON went purely as a Cabinet Minister, guiltless of any duplicity.
Mr. PROTHERO enlivened the discussion on the Corn Production Bill by a new clause providing that where a farmer failed to destroy the rabbits on his land the Board of Agriculture should have power to do it for him and recover the expenses incurred. Sir JOHN SPEAR expected that in some cases the rabbits secured would more than defray the cost of the capture, and declared that unless the farmer was allowed to keep the rabbits the Government would be guilty of "profiteering." As other agricultural Members appeared to share this view, Mr. PROTHERO, most obliging of Ministers, agreed to alter the word "cost" to "net cost." I hope no litigious farmer will seek to evade his liabilities on the ground that, as the Act only says "net cost," he need not pay for the ferrets.
THE FOUNT OF HONOUR AT WORK.
Tuesday, August 7th.—Those peers who were supposed to be shaking in their shoes at the thought of Lord SELBORNE'S impending revelations as to the means by which they acquired their honours might have spared their tremors. He opened his bag to-day, but no cat jumped out, not even the smallest kitten. If he had given a single concrete example of a peer who, having notoriously no public services at his back, must be presumed to have purchased his title, he would have created some effect. But the admission that all his information on the subject was confidential cut the ground from under his feet; and needless to say none of the Peers whom he hypothetically accused of buying their coronets responded to his appeal by standing forth in a white sheet and making open confession of his crime.
Lord SELBORNE was one of three heirs to peerages who a generation ago banded themselves together to resist elevation to the House of Lords. Another of them is Lord CURZON, who answered him to-night, and whose contempt for the Chamber which he now adorns seems to have grown with the years that he has spent in it. Reading between the lines of his speech a cynic could only infer that the Upper House, as at present constituted, is such a useless and superfluous assembly that it does not much matter who gets into it or by what venal ladder he climbs.
The only peers who ventured to get to close quarters with the scandal were Lord KNUTSFORD, who told a moving tale of how a potential baronet diverted £25,000 from the London Hospital to a certain party fund, and thereby achieved his purpose; and Lord SALISBURY, who declared from his knowledge of Prime Ministers that they were sick of administering the system of which Lord CURZON was so ostentatiously ignorant.
Many reasons have been assigned for Mr. CHURCHILL'S reinclusion in the Ministry, but I am inclined to think that the real one has only just been discovered. Mr. MACCALLUM SCOTT is one of the most pertinacious inquisitors of the Treasury Bench; he is also a whole-souled admirer of the Member for DUNDEE, and has written a book in eulogy of his achievements by sea and land. Mr. CHURCHILL has rewarded this devotion by appointing Mr. SCOTT his private secretary, and, as it is contrary to Parliamentary etiquette for a Member holding this position to interrogate other Ministers, has thereby conferred a distinct benefit upon his new colleagues. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE is now reported to be on the look-out for other statesmen in whom Mr. HOGGE and Mr. PRINGLE repose a similar trust, but so far without success; and it is thought that his only chance is to make Mr. PRINGLE an Under-Secretary on condition that he takes Mr. HOGGE as his âme damnée, or vice versâ.
