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ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF TOBY, M.P.

House of Commons, Monday, May 16.—­This looked forward to in advance as grand field-night.  SQUIRE OF MALWOOD been preparing onslaught on JOKIM’s last Budget.  Should have come off days ago, but Squire had other engagements in the country.  Nothing to equal Prince ARTHUR’s accommodating spirit.  If the Squire not ready to demolish Budget, say, on Thursday, well, it shall be put off till Monday, or even later if that day not convenient.  JOKIM doesn’t mind; accustomed to have his Budgets torn up, and the little pieces returned to him postage unpaid; would feel lonely if Budget went through an uninterrupted course.  Arranged accordingly that to-night the great onslaught shall he delivered.  The Squire judiciously spent interval since Friday amidst quiet glades of Malwood.

“I always like, TOBY,” he said, “if I get a chance, to have Monday set apart for one of my more important speeches.  I make a point of going to the morning service on the day which, happily still, lies ’tween Saturday and Monday, and I don’t know anything more conducive to the preparation of impromptus than a good sermon read out for space of twenty minutes; not more, or your wit begins to falter and you repeat yourself; just twenty minutes.  A moderately comfortable pew, a voice not too loud in the pulpit, a fairly full congregation, and a general sense that you’re doing the right thing and setting an example to your neighbours.  Such circumstances preceding by some twenty-four hours my rising in the Commons, are calculated to make JOKIM sit up.”

[Illustration:  Waiting!]

Calculation on this occasion somewhat astray.  Rather hard to sit up all the way through the Squire’s speech; an hour and a half long; bristling with figures; mellifluous with millions, throbbing with thousands.  The Squire is in peculiar degree dependent for success upon mood of his audience.  In crowded House, Members cheering, laughing, or, if you please, jeering and howling, the Squire improves with every five minutes of his Speech.  To-night House not a quarter full; those present depressed with consciousness that no real fight meant; Mr. G. sat it out with some intervals of suspicious quietude.  HENRY FOWLER also faithful found; sitting with folded arms waiting for the time when a new Chancellor of the Exchequer shall find opening made for him on a newly-arranged Treasury Bench.

Only JOKIM really listened; nervous, restless, murmuring comment, muttering contradiction, clutching at himself with strange gestures reminiscent of hereditary instinct to rend his garments in moments of tribulation.  That was something in recompense for the meditations of yesterday morning.  But as one swallow does not make a summer, neither does one Minister, however unhappy under criticism, make an audience.  JOKIM followed with a speech scrupulously measured as to length by that of the Squire’s; through the dead unhappy night the rain of talk fell on the roof, and everyone was glad when midnight, slowly coming, struck.