Meantime, the
rest of the House is convulsed with laughter, so that there is the
curious contrast of one man--Punch-like in complexion and face--reciting
a dirge while the rest of the House are holding their universal sides
with laughter. The anger came when Sir Henry James and Mr. T.W. Russell
were seen to be fluctuating between the Liberal and the Tory lobby. Joe
wisely found a convenient engagement at Birmingham. At last Toryism
prevailed, and amid a tempest of ironical cheers, the Liberal renegades
went into the Tory lobby.

Then the Tories were beaten by a majority of 56, after which they tried
a little obstruction. But it was promptly sat upon; the closure was
moved; only the solitary and plaintive voice of Mr. Kenyon rose in
protest against it, and so, amid shouts of laughter and triumph, the
doom of the Welsh Establishment was pronounced.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PERSONAL ELEMENT.

[Sidenote: Small jealousies and great questions.]

It is one of the delights of Parliamentary life that you can never be
sure of what is going to take place. The strongest of all possible
Governments may be threatened, and even destroyed, in the course of a
sunny afternoon, which has begun in gaiety and brightest hope; a
reputation may grow or be destroyed in an hour; and an intrigue may
burst upon the assembly in a moment, which has been slowly germinating
for many weeks. Mr. Gladstone had a notice upon the paper on Monday,
February 27th, the effect of which was to demand for the Government most
of the time which ordinarily belongs to the private member. There is no
notice which has more hidden or treacherous depths and cross-currents.
For when you interfere with the private member, you suddenly come in
collision with a vast number of personal vanities, and when you touch
anything in the shape of personal vanity in politics you have got into a
hornet's nest, the multitudinousness, the pettiness, the malignity, the
unexpectedness of which you can never appreciate. I sometimes gaze upon
the House of Commons in a certain semi-detached spirit, and I ask myself
if there be any place in the whole world where you can see so much of
the mean as well as of the loftiest passions of human nature as in a
legislative assembly. Look at these men sitting on the same bench and
members of the same party--perhaps even with exactly the same great
purpose to carry out in public policy, and neither really in the least
dishonest nor insincere. They