ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.
House of Commons, May 9.—This has been great occasion for Windbag Sexton. Excelled himself, and there is no other point of comparison useful or usable. Saunderson, who always takes friendly views of his countrymen opposite, pleads that Sexton's windbaggism is partly due to his birth. In Ireland, he assures me, a mile is longer than in other parts of the Empire; and so, kind-hearted Colonel pleads, some allowance should be made for Sexton when he gets on the oratorical tramp. That's all very well; but, for a man to talk two hours and three-quarters in a so-called Debate, is even more than the national tendency towards exaggeration illustrated by the Irish mile will excuse. Why couldn't Sexton have windbagged on some day of last week? Suppose, for example, his self-sacrificing friends had made a House for him at a quarter to nine on Friday night, and he had then talked for three hours and a quarter?—or on Wednesday there was opportunity; whilst openings might have been made on Tuesday or Thursday.
"No, Toby," said Sexton, when I suggested this in interests of House and public time, "you're a well-meaning fellow, but you don't understand everything. You see in debate of this kind all principal men stand off till the last day. We might have twinkled on several days of last week, but we prefer to coruscate on last night. Sure of an audience; Whips out; crowds in; excitement everywhere. I and Harcourt, and Chamberlain, and Balfour, all save ourselves for the last night. Can't all speak, perhaps, especially if I get on first: but they must take their chance. With the Universe waiting and listening for me, other things and other people must stand aside. Very serious thing to disappoint the Universe."
So Sexton, rising at five o'clock, with the windbag conveniently disposed under arm, pumped and pumped away for two mortal hours, and an odd three-quarters that seemed more than mortal. Grandolph waiting to make a speech; Arthur Balfour longing to be at 'em. Members knowing what was in store, "expecting," as Sheehy said, that "every moment would be his next." But Sexton flowed on for ever, with aggravating pauses, with a smile of sublime, unruffled satisfaction, that made the position ten times as aggravating as it otherwise would have been. To smile and smile, and play such a villanous trick as this on a suffering House was worse than most disordered fancy painted.
"If," said Arthur Balfour, in one of his agonised asides, "the fellow did not undisguisedly enjoy such supreme happiness, our lot would be more bearable."
"Never mind," said Old Morality. "Bad enough, I admit. But do you know why persons are sometimes killed by having a charcoal fire in their bedrooms? Because the carbon of burning charcoal unites with the oxygen of air, and forms carbonic acid gas, which is a narcotic poison. So it is here. Sexton has got hold of some good points; he is not inapt as a speaker; if his inordinate vanity had only permitted him to be satisfied with occupying time of House for half an hour, or, say, three-quarters, he would have made damaging speech; as it is, he wearies House to death, swamps us all and himself in waste of verbiage, and the people he attacks escape in the general misery. In other words, his carbon of burning vanity, uniting with the oxygen of opportunity, forms a speech two hours and three-quarters long; which is a narcotic poison."
Mr. G., with the ardour of youth, and the training of an athlete, proposed to himself to hear what Sexton had to say. Accordingly took up convenient seat below Gangway. Stayed there an hour. Then walked back an altered man; shattered; aged; almost in a state of coma.
"Well, you ought to have known better," I said, somewhat sharply, having no sympathies with these vagaries.