With Liberals only less exclusively than with the Conservative party, it has, from time immemorial, been A daring the custom to appoint as Chief Whip a scion of Experiment. the peerage, or a commoner sanctified by connection with an old county family. Tom Ellis had neither call to the high position. His father was a tenant farmer. He himself was Welsh member, having neither social standing nor pecuniary resources. To make such a man what is still known by the ancient style of Patronage Secretary was a bold experiment. That even at the outset it was not resented by the party is a striking tribute to Tom Ellis's character.

It would not be true to say that, in private conversation, heads were not shaken, and that tongues did not wag apprehension that the thing would never do. The new Whip speedily lived down these not unnatural and scarcely illnatured doubts. He had a sweet serenity of temper impervious to pin-pricks, a sunny nature before which spite thawed. It was an immense lift for a young, obscure Welsh member at a bound to be made the confidant of Cabinet Ministers, the trusted agent and instrument of the most powerful governing body in the world. It did not even begin to spoil him. There was no difference between Tom Ellis, member for Merionethshire, and Tom Ellis, Chief Ministerial Whip, except perhaps that the latter was more diffident in his demeanour, a shade nearer being deferential in his intercourse with fellow-members. His most marked failing was his extreme modesty-unique default in a Parliamentary Whip. It did not, however, cover weakness of will or hesitancy when he heard the call of duty. He was genuinely sorry if any particular course for the adoption or the carrying out of which he was responsible hurt anybody's feelings, or did not fully accord with one's material interests. If a thing had to be done, it was got through, smilingly, gently, but firmly.

Tom Ellis was so unassuming in manner, so persistently deprecatory of his own claims to thanks or approval, that his great capacity was often underestimated. Alike in the

House of Commons and in Parliament Street we have time now to sum it up at its real value.

The Prime Minister rarely takes notes as a preliminary to taking part in a debate. Among many instances of this habit I well remember his speech on the second Salisbury's reading of the Home Rule Bill in the Session Memory. of 1893. He sat out the course of long and, on the first night, dreary speaking in his familiar attitude, with

Lord

head bowed, legs crossed, the right one persistently shaken in fashion tending to drive mad neighbours of nervous habit. He did not as he listened take a single note. When at ten o'clock on the second night of the debate he stood at the table, he laid upon it a square of paper about the size of an ordinary envelope. This presumably contained the notes of his speech brought down from his study. If so, He went steadily on,

they were almost entirely ignored. his speech a stately river of perfectly-turned phrases. He omitted no point in the argument of speakers in favour of the Bill, and more than once quoted them textually.

That, a by no means infrequent occurrence, is the chiefest marvel. Debaters most chary of note-taking invariably write down the very words of an earlier speaker when they intend to cite them in support of their argument. A sentence that strikes Lord Salisbury is burnt in upon his memory.

When the proper moment comes he quotes it without lapsing into paraphrase.

A colleague of the Premier's tells me he once spoke to him admiringly of this wonderful gift. Lord Salisbury explained that he adopted the habit from necessity rather than from choice. He felt hopelessly hampered with written notes, often finding difficulty in reading them. Feeling the necessity of mastering the precise turns of particular phrases as they dropped from the lips of a debater, he gives himself up to the task, and rarely finds himself at fault.

Mr. Arthur Balfour in lesser degree shares his uncle's gift of precise memory. When, as happened this Session, he has to expound an intricate measure like Note-takers. the London Government Bill, he provides himself

with sheafs of notes, and his speech suffers in perspicacity accordingly. That laboriously prepared effort was his one failure of the Session. As a rule he is exceedingly frugal in the matter of note-taking. More frequently than otherwise he speaks without the assistance of notes. Like Mr. Gladstone, Sir William Harcourt, and all Parliamentary debaters of the first rank, he is at his best when, suddenly called upon, he plunges into chance debate.

Sir William Harcourt is a voluminous note-taker, his big, as distinguished from his great, speeches being almost entirely read from an appalling pile of manuscript. Mr. Cham

berlain rarely trusts him

self in the sea of debate without the bladder of notes.

they are not extended.

serves for their setting forth.

But

A sheet of note-paper usually

Lord Mayo.

The new Viceroy of India1 was more fortunate in the attitude of public opinion towards his appointment than was a predecessor nominated exactly thirty years earlier. When Mr. Disraeli made Lord Mayo Governor-General of India, the announcement was hailed with a storm of opprobrium from newspapers not marshalled solely on the Opposition side. The Viceroy-designate was chiefly known to the House of Commons and the public by a once-famous, now forgotten, speech, delivered in the spring of 1868. John Francis Maguire, forerunner of the Parnellite organisation, submitted a series of resolutions on the condition of Ireland. In the course of his speech he dwelt upon the evil effects wrought to his country by the existence of the Irish Church. That was the burning question of the hour. A month later, Mr. Gladstone's Resolution decreeing the disestablishment of the Church was carried in the teeth of the Ministry by a large majority. It was known that the pending General Election would turn upon the issue. Lord Mayo, at the time Irish Secretary, was put up to answer Mr. Maguire.

There are some (exceedingly few) members of the present House who recall the speech and the scene. For four hours the Irish Secretary floundered along. Just as he seemed to be collapsing from physical exhaustion, shared by his audience, he pulled himself together and spluttered out a sentence that instantly agitated the House. Mr. Maguire

had denounced the Church Establishment as a scandalous and monstrous anomaly. The Irish Secretary, hinting at a scheme for making all religious denominations in Ireland happy without sacrificing the Established Church, talked about "levelling up, not levelling down."

The phrase was instantly recognised as coming from the mint of the Mystery Monger sitting with bowed head and folded arms on the Treasury Bench. What did it mean? Was Dizzy going to dish Gladstone by dealing with the Irish Church question before the enemy got the chance? No one off the Treasury Bench ever knew. Some day the

1 Lord Curzon.

mystery may be unravelled. Up to this time Lord Mayo fills the position of

Him who left half-told

The story of Cambuscan bold.

On the last day of July in the same year Parliament was dissolved, and within a week it was whispered that Lord Mayo was to be the new Governor-General of India. Exile seemed a just punishment for a four hours' speech murmured before a hapless House of Commons. But there was a general impression that this kind of exile was, in the circumstances, too splendid.

"Many a Slip."

One of Lord Mayo's intimate friends who saw the new Viceroy off on his journey to India tells me a curious incident illustrative of the situation. Expressing hope of some time looking in to see the Viceroy at Calcutta, or Simla, Lord Mayo said: "You may see me again much sooner than that. I should not be a bit surprised if, when I get to Suez, I find a telegram recalling me."

Since his appointment, and pending his departure, Mr. Gladstone had been returned by a majority that placed him in a position of autocratic supremacy. There was, unquestionably, something out of the way in the haste with which the fallen Government had filled up the greatest prize at their disposal. There was at the time no question of the possibility of Lord Derby's Administration being reinstated. As my friend (a Conservative member of the last Parliament elected under the Reform Bill of 1832) put it, "Defeated about twice a week in the House of Commons, going to certain doom in the country, Dizzy pitchforked Mayo on to the Viceregal throne." It would have been a strong course to recall him, but the circumstances were unprecedented.

Certainly Lord Mayo did not feel safe till he had passed Suez, going forward on a journey which, three years later, the assassin's knife ended on the Andaman Islands. Meanwhile, "Dizzy's dark horse" had come in the first flight in the race for enduring fame among Indian Viceroys.