Major Magruder was chairman of his own committee, and being a man of a laborious turn of mind, much given to blue-books, very patient, thoroughly conversant with the House, and imbued with a strong belief in the efficacy of parliamentary questionings to carry a point, if not to elicit a fact, had a happy time of it during this session.  He was a man who always attended the House from 4 p.m. to the time of its breaking up, and who never missed a division.  The slight additional task of sitting four hours in a committee-room three days a week, was only a delight, the more especially as during those four hours he could occupy the post of Chairman.  Those who knew Major Magruder well did not doubt but that the Committee would sit for many weeks, and that the whole theory of colonial government, or rather of imperial control supervising such government, would be tested to the very utmost.  Men who had heard the old Major maunder on for years past on his pet subject, hardly knew how much vitality would be found in him when his maundering had succeeded in giving him a committee.

A Governor from one of the greater colonies had already been under question for nearly a week, and was generally thought to have come out of the fire unscathed by the flames of the Major’s criticism.  This Governor had been a picked man, and he had made it appear that the control of Downing Street was never more harsh and seldom less refreshing and beautifying than a spring shower in April.  No other lands under the sun were so blest, in the way of government, as were the colonies with which he had been acquainted; and, as a natural consequence, their devotion and loyalty to the mother country were quite a passion with them.  Now the Major had been long of a mind that one or two colonies had better simply be given up to other nations, which were more fully able to look after them than was England, and that three or four more should be allowed to go clear, costing England nothing, and owing England nothing.  But the well-chosen Governor who had now been before the Committee, had rather staggered the Major, and things altogether were supposed to be looking up for the Colonial Office.

And now had come the day of Sir Marmaduke’s martyrdom.  He was first requested, with most urbane politeness, to explain the exact nature of the government which he exercised in the Mandarins.  Now it certainly was the case that the manner in which the legislative and executive authorities were intermingled in the affairs of these islands, did create a complication which it was difficult for any man to understand, and very difficult indeed for a man to explain to others.  There was a Court of Chancery, so called, which Sir Marmaduke described as a little parliament.  When he was asked whether the court exercised legislative or executive functions, he said at first that it exercised both, and then that it exercised neither.  He knew that it consisted of nine men, of whom five were