Home Rule
party managed in the Parliament of 1880-85 to monopolize the time
pertaining to private members. Their quick eyes detected what is simple
enough when explained--that the ballot system contained potentialities
for increasing the chances of a Bill by twenty or thirty fold. Suppose
they had ten Bills or motions they desired to bring forward. They
usually had more, but ten is sufficient to contemplate. These were
arranged in accordance with their claim to priority. Every member of the
party wrote his name down in the ballot-book, thus securing an
individual chance at the ballot. Whilst the ballot was in progress, each
had in his hand a list of the Bills in their order of priority. The
member whose name was first called by the Speaker gave notice of the
most urgent Bill, the second and third taking the next favourable
positions, and so on to the end.

It will be seen that, supposing fifty or sixty members thus combined,
their pet Bill would have fifty or sixty chances to one against the
hapless private member with his solitary voice. The secret was long
kept, and the Irish members carried everything before them at the
ballot. Now the murder is out, and there are almost as many syndicates
as there are private Bills. All can grow the flower now, for all have
got the seed. But it naturally follows that competition is practically
again made even. The advantage to be derived from the syndicate system
has appreciably decreased, whilst its practice immeasurably lengthens
the process of balloting.

LOUIS JENNINGS.

Mr. Louis Jennings, though he sat on the same side of the House as Sir
Walter Barttelot, and within a week or two of his neighbour's departure
likewise answered to the old Lobby cry, "Who goes home?" was of a
different type of Conservative, was a man of literary training, generous
culture, and wide knowledge of the world, and made his fame and fortune
long before he entered the House of Commons. It was the late Mr. Delane
whose quick eye discovered his journalistic ability, and gave him his
first commission on the _Times_. He visited America in the service of
that journal, and being there remained to take up the editorship of the
_New York Times_, making himself and his journal famous by his
successful tilting against what, up to his appearance in the list, had
been the invincible Tweed conspiracy. He edited the "Croker Papers," and
wrote a "study" of Mr. Gladstone--a bitterly clever book, to which the
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