Parliament of 1886-92, he voted in 2072. In respect of the mastery of other questions besides those specially pertaining to India, Sir Richard had exceptional claims to the attention of the House of Commons. But he never succeeded in catching its ear, and after a struggle not less gallant and prolonged than that of Sir George Balfour or Sir George Campbell, he shook the dust of the House from off his feet.

Macaulay, another eminent immigrant from India, after brief experience, described

The

the

reason why. House of Commons as the most peculiar audience in the world. "I should say," he wrote to Whewell sixty-six years ago, "that a man's being a good writer, a good orator at the Bar, a good mob orator, or a good orator in debating clubs, was rather a reason for expecting him to fail than for expecting him to succeed in the House of Commons. A place where Walpole succeeded and Addison failed; where Dundas succeeded and Burke failed; where Peel now succeeds and where Mackintosh fails; where Erskine and Scarlett were dinnerbells; where Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their time, were thought bores, is surely a very strange place."

In the case of men who have made their mark in India there is not even this attraction of variety. They all prove dinner-bells. One reason for this is that they enter the House too late in life. There are exceedingly few exceptions to the rule that men do not reach supreme position in the House of Commons unless they enter it on the sunny side of thirty.

More directly fatal to House of Commons success of

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Indian ex-Ministers and officials is the absolutely altered conditions of life. Stepping from Government House in one of the Provinces of India on to the floor of the House of Commons, they experience a more striking and not so attractive a transformation as Alice realised when she wandered into Wonderland. For years accustomed to autocratic power, his lightest whisper a command, the ex-Satrap finds himself an unconsidered member of a body of men who, unless their demeanour is misleading, would think nothing of tweaking the nose of the ex-Governor of Bombay or digging in the ribs the ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal.

The lesson is learnt in time. To begin with, it is difficult for a man who, as Sir Richard Temple boasts in his own case, has ruled over millions, to realise that he must compete with borough members and the like in the effort to catch the Speaker's eye. His earliest natural impulse is to clap his hands and order the optic to be brought to him on a charger. By the time the hard lesson is learned spirit is broken, ambition is smothered, old age creeps on, and strong, capable, successful men, who have thrown up high appointments in India in order to serve their country and themselves in a Parliamentary career, find how much sharper than a serpent's tooth is House of Commons' ingratitude.

Unnamed

The gentlemen of England who live at home at ease, and, morning after morning, through an important debate in the House of Commons, glance down the Heroes. report of speeches delivered on the previous night, reck little of tearless dumb tragedies that take place in the historic Chamber and find no record. It is all very well for the man who has worked off his speech, even if the benches should empty at his rising, and the newspapers give the barest summary of his argument.

Alas for those who never sing,

But die with all their music in them.

Through nights of big debates, for one member who

catches the Speaker's eye there are, at least, twenty who

To do it all through a night seems unendurable. To repeat

the experience night after night, and hear the division called with the speech yet unspoken, is sufficient to blight existence. Yet such a fate is by no means uncommon. In some cases a last pang is added by the consciousness that the

MISSED!

wife of one's bosom, or the dutiful daughters who believe Pa's oratory would remove mountains of objection, regard the shameful scene from the seclusion of the Ladies' Gallery.

Disgust and disappointment, born of this evil fate, occasionally find The Front expression in pro- Benches. test against the number and length of speeches delivered from either Front Bench. It will be understood in what mood a member, smarting under constant repulse, sees another chance snatched from him by the interposition of a

minor Minister or, worse still, by an ex-Under Secretary rising from the Front Opposition Bench, reeling off his speech as a matter of course and right. In big debates, where the pressure of oratory is overpowering and time limited, the Whips on either side make up a list in due order of precedence, which they hand to the Speaker. This he is glad enough to avail himself of, whilst not abrogating his right to make such selection as he pleases.

"Vide!

Members of the present House of Commons have never heard the old Parliamentary roar of passionate wrath. Sometimes when an unwelcome member to-day 'Vide! 'Vide!" interposes in debate, or another, having been on his legs for an hour, proposes to introduce his seventhly, there is a timid cry of "'Vide! 'Vide! 'Vide!" The change

in Parliamentary habit and modes of thought is shown by the fact that the interruption is instantly met by a stern cry of "Order! Order!" in which, if the interruption be persisted in, the Speaker is sure to join. Not that the audience desire to have more of the eloquence from which they have suffered. But it is not, in these days, the fashion to shout down an obnoxious member.

Mr. Courtney remembers when things were quite otherwise. There was a Wednesday afternoon in June, in the Session of 1877, when the Woman's Suffrage Talked out Bill made one of its successive appearances. his own Bill. The advocates of the measure-foremost among whom was Mr. Courtney-were flushed with hope of a good division. At a quarter past five, the champion rose to clench the argument in favour of the second reading. Under the standing orders then in force, Wednesday's debate must needs close at a quarter to six. If any member was on his feet when the hand of the clock touched the quarter, the debate would automatically stand adjourned. The House had had enough of debate carried on through a long summer afternoon. Members knew Mr. Courtney's views on the question, and would rather have the division than enjoy opportunity of hearing them formally restated. Accordingly, when he rose there were cries for the division.

But Mr. Courtney, though then comparatively new to Parliamentary life, was not to be put down by clamour. Disregarding the interruption, he went on with his remarks. As he continued the storm rose. Mr. Courtney's back was up, and occasionally so also was his clenched fist, shaken towards high Heaven in enforcement of his argument. At the end of a quarter of an hour a glass of water was