ind up the
debate. But their opportunity for orating is severely circumscribed. The
audience in the House of Commons does not begin to reassemble after
dinner till half-past ten. Rising at that hour, the Leader of the
Opposition, if he fairly divides the available time with the right
honourable gentleman opposite, must not speak more than three-quarters
of an hour, and should not exceed forty minutes.

This is a necessity desirable not less in the orator's interest than in
that of the audience. Except for the exposition of an intricate measure,
twenty minutes is ample time for any man to say what is useful for his
fellow-men to hear. All Mr. Disraeli's best speeches were made within
half an hour, and if he thought it necessary, from a sense of the
importance of his position, to prolong them, his stock of good things
was exhausted in twenty minutes, the rest being what Carlyle
disrespectfully described as thrice-boiled cole-wort. Mr. Gladstone can
go on indefinitely, and in very recent times has been known to hold his
audience spell-bound for three hours. But even he has profited by the
beneficent tyranny that now rules the limit of debate, and, rising with
the knowledge that he has but forty minutes to speak in, has excelled
himself. For less exuberant speakers not gifted with his genius, the new
discipline is even more marked in its benefits.

[Illustration: MR. KEIR HARDIE.]

* * * * *

It is too soon to endeavour to estimate the general characteristics of
the _personnel_ of the new Parliament. It will probably turn out to be
very much of the same class as the innumerable army of its predecessors.
When Mr. Keir Hardie came down on the opening day in a wagonette, with
flags flying and accordions playing, it was cried aloud in some quarters
that the end was at hand. This apprehension was strengthened when Mr.
Hardie strolled about the House with a tweed travelling cap on his head,
the Speaker at the time being in the chair. This, as Dr. Johnson
explained, when the lady asked him why he had described the horse's
pastern as its knee, was "ignorance, pure ignorance." Mr. Hardie is not
a man of the quietest manners, as was testified to by the apparition in
Palace Yard of the wagonette and its musical party; but in the
much-talked-of incident of the cap he sinned inadvertently. Before the
Speaker took the chair he had seen members walking about with their hats
on. He had observed that even