ng to say for one in the position of
the Prince of Wales.

This absolute impartiality of attitude does not arise from
indifference to politics or to the current of political warfare.
The Prince is a Peer of Parliament, sits as Duke of Cornwall, and
under that name figures in the division lists on the rare occasions
when he votes. When any important debate is taking place in the
House, he is sure to be found in his corner seat on the front Cross
Bench, an attentive listener. Nor does he confine his attention to
proceedings in the House of Lords. In the Commons there is no more
familiar figure than his seated in the Peers' Gallery over the
clock, with folded hands irreproachably gloved, resting on the
rail before him as he leans forward and watches with keen interest
the sometimes tumultuous scene.

Thus he sat one afternoon in the spring of the session of 1875. He
had come down to hear a speech with which his friend, Mr. Chaplin,
was known to be primed. The House was crowded in every part, a
number of Peers forming the Prince's suite in the gallery, while
the lofty figure of Count Munster, German Ambassador, towered at
his right hand, divided by the partition between the Peers'
Gallery and that set apart for distinguished strangers. It was a
great occasion for Mr. Chaplin, who sat below the gangway visibly
pluming himself and almost audibly purring in anticipation of
coming triumph. But a few days earlier the eminent orator had the
misfortune to incur the resentment of Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar.
All unknown to him, Joseph Gillis was now lying in wait, and just
as the Speaker was about to call on the orator of the evening,
the Member for Cavan rose and observed,--

"Mr. Speaker, Sir, I believe there are strangers in the house."

The House of Commons, tied and bound by its own archaic
regulations, had no appeal against the whim of the indomitable
Joey B. He had spied strangers in due form, and out they must go.
So they filed forth, the Prince of Wales at the head of them, the
proud English Peers following, and by another exit the Envoy of the
most potent sovereign of the Continent, representative of a nation
still flushed with the overthrow of France--all publicly and
peremptorily expelled at the raising of the finger of an uneducated,
obscure Irishman, who, when not concerned with the affairs of the
Imperial Parliament, was curing bacon at Belfast and selling it at
enhanced prices to the Saxon in the Liverpool market