llow. Three times I have
known the House of Commons surrendered to illimitable mirth and on
each occasion the victim of its derision is somewhat pitiable. But poor
Kenealy! he stood there lost, astounded, vacant, a quite tragic figure,
and when the crowded House had ceased to laugh out of pure exhaustion,
he spoke again in a tone completely changed; all the forensic manner
gone out of him. That he could find a voice at all after such a scathing
was an evidence of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence he
had shot his bolt. He never attempted to address the House again. I
do not remember even to have seen him within its precincts after that
catastrophe.

It is not impossible there may have been a little touch of gratified
malice in that Homeric laugh which killed Kenealy's parliamentary
career, but there was certainly not a trace of it in that heroic peal of
mirth which dismissed Mr Newdigate from the scene of his parliamentary
activities. Mr Newdigate was undoubtedly a dull man, he was undoubtedly
an eccentric, but he was just as certainly a gentleman and he enjoyed
everybody's esteem. He was a long-backed Tory squire who for many years
represented the Northern Division of the County of Warwick. His chief
virtues were that he rode straight to hounds, that he dispensed an
open-handed old-fashioned hospitality to his hunt and that he voted
regularly and faithfully with his party. There was no man who could more
quickly empty a full House than he. The very sight of him on his feet
created a stampede, and throughout his parliamentary life it had been
his lot to empty benches. But at last his chance came. Our present
King, then Prince of Wales, was about to visit India, and the Government
proposed a vote of 60,000L. to enable him to do the thing in proper
fashion. Mr Peter Taylor, a distinguished Radical of that time, rose to
move the previous question, and then Mr Newdigate, in recognition, as
one supposes, of the faithful party service of many years, was allowed
to support the Government resolution. Just for once in his life the
House did not empty at his rising; his chance was here, the coveted
opportunity of a lifetime, and in his own way he proceeded to take
advantage of it. In sepulchral tones he assured Mr Speaker that if this
vote were refused the loyal feelings of this country would receive a
blow, and the popular confidence in that House would receive a blow, and
the loyal sentiment of the Empire would rec