Now several members are interested in the question of payment of members, and for Tuesday, March 21st, or some such day, there was a motion down for payment of members.  Dr. Hunter is interested in the new railway rates, and for Tuesday, March 14th, he had a motion down in reference to railway rates.  Finally, several members are interested in bimetallism, and for Tuesday, February 28th, a motion on this subject was designed.  What, then, Mr. Gladstone proposed meant that Dr. Hunter could not propose his motion of railway rates; that the member interested in payment of members could not propose his motion; that the motion on bimetallism could not be proposed; in short, that these gentlemen, and their motions and their time, should be swallowed up by the voracious maw of the Government.  This description will suffice to bring before the mind of any reader the difficulty and danger of the situation.

[Sidenote:  Disappointed Office-seekers.]

I tread on somewhat delicate ground when I tell the story of the manner in which some members of the Liberal party utilised this situation.  It is no secret that there are in this, as in every House of Commons, a number of gentlemen who do not think that their services have been sufficiently appreciated by the Minister to whom the unhappy task was given of selecting his colleagues in office.  This is the case with every Government, and with every House of Commons—­with every party and with every Ministry.  You do not think that the favourite of fortune whom you envy has reached a period of undisturbed happiness when he sits on the Treasury Bench—­even when he speaks amid a triumphant chorus of cheers, or drives through long lines of enthusiastically cheering crowds.  He has to fight for his life every moment of its existence.  He is climbing not a secure ladder on solid earth, but up a glacier with slipping steps, the abyss beneath, the avalanche above—­watchful enemies all round—­even among the guides he ought to be able to trust.  Do you suppose that every member of the Liberal party loves Mr. Asquith, and is delighted when he displays his great talents?  Do you think that none of the gentlemen below the gangway do not believe that in their mute and inglorious breasts, there are no streams of eloquence more copious and resistless?  No, my friend, take this as an axiom of political careers, that you hold your life as long as you are able to kill anybody who tries to kill you, and not one hour longer.

[Sidenote:  Powerful malcontents.]

It will be seen at once that a party of malcontents is especially powerful in a Parliament which has in hand the greatest task of our time, and which on the other side has a majority which revolt of even a small number can at any moment turn into a dishonoured and impotent minority.  Such being the material, a nice little plot was concocted by which a certain number of young members, full of all that vague distrust of existing ministries which belongs to ardent young