[Sidenote:  The dearest foes.]

Between two other men there intervenes not the space of even a seat; they are cheek by jowl, and touching each other’s coat-tails; and yet there yawns between them a gulf of deadly and almost murderous hate which not years, nor forgiveness, nor recollections of past comradeship will ever bridge over.  And look at the House as a whole, and what do you see but a number of fierce ambitions, hatreds, and antipathies, natural and acquired—­the play of the worst and the deadliest passions of the human heart?  Above all things, be assured that there is scarcely one in all this assembly whose natural stock of vanity—­that dreadful heritage we all have—­has not been maximised and sharpened by the glare, the applause, the collisions and frictions of public life.  I have heard it said that even the manliest fellow, who has become an actor, is liable to be filled to a bursting gorge with hatred of the pretty woman who may snatch from him a round of applause; and assuredly every nature is liable to be soured, inflamed, and degraded by those appearances before the gallery of the public meeting, the watchful voters, the echoing Press, and all the other agencies that create and register public fame.

[Sidenote:  Blighted hopes.]

Think of all this, and then imagine what a Prime Minister does who proposes a scheme which will deprive some dozens of men of an opportunity of public attention for which they have been panting and working perchance for years.  Recollect, furthermore, that the private member may be interested in his proposal with the fanaticism of the faddist—­the relentless purpose of the philanthropist, the vehement ardour of the reformer.  Then you can understand something of the danger which Mr. Gladstone had to face.  For his motion came to this, that every member—­except one—­who had a resolution on the paper which he desired to bring before the House had to be either silenced altogether or pushed into a horrid and ghastly hour when either he would not be listened to by a dozen members, or would perhaps be guillotined out of a hearing by the count out.  Let me further explain, for I wish to make the whole scene intelligible to every reader.  Tuesdays and Fridays belong to private members as well as Wednesdays, and on Tuesdays and Fridays accordingly private members bring forward motions on some subjects in which they are especially interested.  In order to get these Tuesdays and Fridays, they have to ballot—­so keen is the competition for the place—­and if a member be lucky enough to be first called in the ballot, he gives notice of his motion, and for the Tuesday or the Friday the best part of the sitting is as much his as if it belonged to the Government.

[Sidenote:  Salaried Members—­Railway Rates—­Bimetallism.]