onservatives,
they propitiate the Landlords and the Church by putting forward some
outrageously retrograde proposal or other, secure in the knowledge that
it will be knocked on the head by the halfpenny papers. Of the remaining
ten per cent----"

"About nine," resumed Robin, "is appropriated automatically to
absolutely essential routine business, like the Budget and Supply----"

"And the remaining one per cent," struck in Champion, "is devoted to
real live Legislation."

Then they both looked at me, this pair of carping pessimists, rather
furtively, like two fags who have allowed their tongues to wag over
freely in the presence of a monitor. It was a curious tribute to the
power of officialdom, for they were both far bigger men, in every sense,
than I. Finally Champion laughed.

"Don't look so horrified, Adrian," he said. "Mr Fordyce and I croak too
much. Still, you will find a grain or two of sense among the chaff, as
Jack Point says."

But I was not to be smoothed down so easily.

"According to you fellows," I grumbled, as I passed the port, "there is
practically no difference between one political party and another."

"None whatever," said Champion cheerfully--"not between the _backbones_
of the parties, that is. Of course excrescences don't count. Tell me,
Adrian, what bill, barring one or two contentious semi-religious
measures, has ultimately reached the Statute Book during the last twenty
years that might not have been put there by either party without any
violent departure from its principles? Not one! Foreign policy, again.
Does it make any difference to our position in the world which party is
in office nowadays? Not a scrap. The difference between the two sides is
immaterial. There is often a far deeper line of cleavage between two
sections of the same party than between party and party. We make faces
at each other, it is true; and one side plumes itself on the moral
support of Royalty and the aristocracy, while the other always bawls out
that it has the inviolable will of the people at its back,--I daresay
one assertion is about as true as the other--but I don't think there is
a pennyworth of difference, really. There used to be a lot, mind you,
when the Plebs were really struggling for a footing in the scheme of
things; but bless you! we are all more or less in the same crowd now.
Just a difference of label, that's all."

"There was a story my dominie used to tell," said Robin, who had been
listen