ur."

"On Sunday night last, aye!"

"What, on Sunday night!" exclaimed one honourable member on the extreme
right of the Chairman, with horror depicted on his countenance; "are you
sure, witness, that it was done in the evening of a Sabbath?"

"The honourable member asks you, whether you are certain that you were
called upon by the railway gentlemen to sign the petition on a Sunday
evening? I think you told me last Sunday evening."

"Oa, yees, zur; they kum just as we war a garing to chapel."

"Disgraceful, and wrong in the extreme!" ejaculated the honourable
member.

"And did not that gentleman" (continued the Agent for the Bill), "nor any
of the railway gentlemen, as you call them, when they requested you to
sign, explain the nature and contents of the petition?"

"Noa, zur."

"Then you don't know at this moment what it's for?"

"Noa, zur."

"Of course, therefore, it's not your petition as set forth?"

"I doant nar, zur. I zined zummit."

"Now, answer me, do you object to this line of railway? Have you any
dislike to it?"

"O, noa, zur. I shud loak to zee it kum."

"Exactly, you should like to see it made. So you have been led to
petition against it, though you are favourable to it?"

The petitioner against the Bill did not appear to comprehend the precise
drift of the remark, and his only reply to the wordy fix into which the
learned agent had drawn him was made in the dumb-show of scratching with
his one disengaged hand (the other being employed in holding his hat) his
uncombed head--an operation that created much laughter, which was not
damped by the Agent's putting, with a serious face, a concluding question
or remark to him to the effect that he presumed he (the witness) had not
paid, or engaged to pay, so many guineas a day to his friend on the other
side for the prosecution of the opposition against the Bill--had he; yes,
or no? The witness's appearance was the only and best answer.

The petition, of course, upon this _expose_, was withdrawn.

This, the substance of what actually took place before one of the
Sub-Committees on Standing orders will give some idea of the nature of
many of the petitions against Railway Bills, especially on technical
points. It will serve to show in some measure what heartless mockeries
these petitions mostly are; the moral evils they give birth to--and that,
even while complaining of errors, they are themselves made up of
falsehood.

AN IDEA ON R