was too dangerous a power to
entrust to them; it would breed absenteeism and drive capital out of
the country.

Lord FINLAY, to whom as a Scotsman logic still makes appeal, was for
the deletion of the whole clause. But the Irish Peers again objected;
for they desired to preserve for the Irish Parliaments power to remit
Imperial taxes, on the off-chance that some day it might be exercised.
And they carried their point.

According to Lieut.-Colonel CROFT the pencils used by the British
Post-Office are procured from the United States. As one who has
suffered I can only hope that Anglo-American friendship, already
somewhat strained by the bacon episode, will survive this revelation.

On the strength of a rumour that the seed of Irish peace had been
planted in Downing Street, Mr. HOGGE promptly essayed to root it up in
order to observe its progress towards fruition. The PRIME MINISTER,
however, gave no encouragement to his well-intentioned efforts. Nor
did he satisfy Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY'S curiosity as to whether
Father O'FLANAGAN was "a Sinn Feiner on the bridge," beyond saying
"that is what we want to find out."

_Tuesday, December 7th._--After a week's interval for reflection and
study Lord LINCOLNSHIRE moved the rejection of the Agriculture Bill.
Adapting an old joke of Lord SPENCER'S, made in "another place" a
generation ago, he observed that this was no more an agricultural Bill
than he himself was an agricultural labourer. He knows however how
to call a spade a spade, if not something more picturesque, and he
treated the measure and its authors to all the resources of a varied
vocabulary. Possibly his brother peers, while enjoying his invective,
thought that it had been a little bit overdone, for of the subsequent
speakers only Lord HINDLIP announced his intention of voting against
the Bill, the others being of opinion that parts of it were, not
excellent perhaps, but at least tolerable.

In the Commons Viscount CURZON pressed upon the Government the
desirability of licensing side-car combinations as taxi-cabs. The idea
might, one feels, appeal to a Coalition Government but Sir JOHN BAIRD
for the Home Office hinted at the existence of "serious objections."

Collectively the House has an infantile mind. It went into kinks of
laughter over a question put by Dr. MURRAY regarding the "daily mail
service" between one of his beloved islands and the Scottish mainland.
The author of the joke--and small blame to