Time was when it was usual to move to reduce a Vote by a hundred pounds if you wanted to defeat the Government.  But such paltry figures are no good in these spacious days.  Sir DONALD MACLEANS’S proposed reduction in the Vote on Account for the Civil Services was the much more mouth-filling morsel of one hundred million pounds.  Mr. CHAMBERLAIN considered it very handsome of the Opposition, on the eve, he understood, of coming into office, thus to cut off its own supplies.  Nevertheless he declined to accept the generous offer.  Our finances would be all right if the House would back the Government by practising economy as well as preaching it.  As it was, he thought the worst was over, for—­strange and agreeable phenomenon—­the floating debt was sinking.

After this it was, perhaps, not very complimentary’of Mr. J.W.  WILSON to urge the Government to put forth their best speakers.  The PRIME MINISTER was still coy, but Sir ROBERT HORNE, in virtue of his new office as President of the Board of Trade, stepped nimbly into the breach, and made a speech so cheerful both in substance and delivery as to justify the hope that in him the Government have found the HORNE of Plenty.

Wednesday, March 17th.—­Seventeen years ago Lord BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH, as a hard-shell Free Trader, sacrificed office sooner than bow the knee to the new gods of Birmingham.  This afternoon he brought in a Bill (to safeguard “key industries” and counteract “dumping”) which would have gladdened the heart of Mr. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.  Some of the other Free Trade Peers were still unrepentant.  Lord BEAUCHAMP, for example, declaring that shipping was our real “quay-industry” and needed no protection, announced his intention of moving the rejection of the Bill; and Lord CREWE, although one of the authors of the Paris resolutions, on which the measure was ostensibly based, thought that it went far beyond present necessities.  The only dumps with which Germany was likely to be associated for some time to come were doleful, not aggressive.

The Report of the Supplementary Estimates furnished the Commons with abundant points for criticism.  In protesting against an increase in the remuneration of the Law Officers, Mr. HOGGE revealed a hitherto unsuspected admiration for the PRIME MINISTER, whose services, he considered, were most inadequately rewarded with five thousand pounds a year and no pension.  If anyone deserved an increase of salary it was he.

Mr. TYSON-WILSON had the temerity to complain that the Government were not finding work for all the disabled ex-Service men whom they trained in the technical schools, and laid himself open to a damaging “tu quoque” from Sir ROBERT HORNE, who pointed out that this lack of employment was largely due to the trade unions, which refused to admit these men as “improvers.”

In introducing the Naval Estimates for eighty odd millions Mr. LONG was almost apologetic for not having made them larger.  The personnel has been drastically reduced, and parents are actually being offered a premium of three hundred pounds to remove their sons from Osborne.  On the other hand promotion from the lower deck was to be encouraged, and in future every youngster entering the Navy would metaphorically carry a broad-pennant in his ditty-box.