at the man who is
capable of saying that he likes dry champagne, is capable of saying
anything.' Now, sir, it is not within my purpose or my province to
charge the right honourable gentleman who controls the destinies of
the party opposite with tergiversation, but this I will say that, on my
honour and my conscience, I believe that he is capable of declaring that
he is fond of dry champagne!"

This astonishing sally was greeted with roars of laughter and cries
of disapproval, neither of which moved the speaker in the least. The
incident somehow remained unreported, but one can easily fancy the
avidity with which it would have been pounced upon by the alerter
journalism of modern days.

Mr Thomas Burt was the first working man to be returned to Parliament,
where his sterling qualities of character and his unassuming and natural
demeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two after
his return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed the
characteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was a
vulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches with
outstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heard
in answer to any utterance of which he might approve from such
inconsiderable persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. His "Hear,
hear, hear," was the very essence of a self-satisfied and unconscious
insolence. He was a man who would have patronised the angel Gabriel,
and he was quite unconscious of his own offensiveness until he tried
his hand upon Disraeli, when he found his level once for all and with a
ludicrous swiftness.

He and Mr Burt had together backed a Bill which was intended to do
something to ameliorate the condition of the coal-miners of this
country, and at the annual slaughter of the innocents, Mr Disraeli
announced that it was the intention of the Government to carry on the
measure. The statement had already fallen from his lips and he had just
entered on another sentence when the intolerable patronising voice broke
in, "Hear, hear, hear," "Hear, hear hear," as if a very great personage
with too great a consciousness of his own greatness were expressing his
approval of the conduct of a little boy. Disraeli stopped dead short in
his speech and one of the finest bits of comedy I can remember to have
seen ensued. He closed his eyes and began very deliberately to fumble
about the breast of his frock-coat within and without in search