telligible to every reader. Tuesdays and Fridays belong to
private members as well as Wednesdays, and on Tuesdays and Fridays
accordingly private members bring forward motions on some subjects in
which they are especially interested. In order to get these Tuesdays and
Fridays, they have to ballot--so keen is the competition for the
place--and if a member be lucky enough to be first called in the ballot,
he gives notice of his motion, and for the Tuesday or the Friday the
best part of the sitting is as much his as if it belonged to the
Government.

[Sidenote: Salaried Members--Railway Rates--Bimetallism.]

Now several members are interested in the question of payment of
members, and for Tuesday, March 21st, or some such day, there was a
motion down for payment of members. Dr. Hunter is interested in the new
railway rates, and for Tuesday, March 14th, he had a motion down in
reference to railway rates. Finally, several members are interested in
bimetallism, and for Tuesday, February 28th, a motion on this subject
was designed. What, then, Mr. Gladstone proposed meant that Dr. Hunter
could not propose his motion of railway rates; that the member
interested in payment of members could not propose his motion; that the
motion on bimetallism could not be proposed; in short, that these
gentlemen, and their motions and their time, should be swallowed up by
the voracious maw of the Government. This description will suffice to
bring before the mind of any reader the difficulty and danger of the
situation.

[Sidenote: Disappointed Office-seekers.]

I tread on somewhat delicate ground when I tell the story of the manner
in which some members of the Liberal party utilised this situation. It
is no secret that there are in this, as in every House of Commons, a
number of gentlemen who do not think that their services have been
sufficiently appreciated by the Minister to whom the unhappy task was
given of selecting his colleagues in office. This is the case with every
Government, and with every House of Commons--with every party and with
every Ministry. You do not think that the favourite of fortune whom you
envy has reached a period of undisturbed happiness when he sits on the
Treasury Bench--even when he speaks amid a triumphant chorus of cheers,
or drives through long lines of enthusiastically cheering crowds. He has
to fight for his life every moment of its existence. He is climbing not
a secure ladder on solid earth, but up a gl