one new aid have you and yours to give to it? You compared the pursuit of the public good last night to a fox-hunt; and you spoke of all the self-denials and activity that hunting entails. Yes, but life is not like a fox-hunt; nor is the desire for useful activity like the hunter's eagerness. The central fact of life for the vast majority of mankind has not been an eagerness, but a perplexity-the perplexity of an eagerness vacillating between two counter-attractions. The most self-indulgent of men will often get up early to hunt; but the duty of killing the fox will not coerce him into doing so if he wishes also to remain at home and make love to his neighbour's wife. No, no. The creed you fancy you live by has never really guided anyone, never really strengthened anyone.'

'I live by it,' said Mrs. Norham. 'I and a thousand others are living examples of it. It is this that sustains and strengthens us, and makes our life full of such infinite significance and joy to us, though we neither hope for heaven, nor have the least fear of hell. Do I paint my pictures because God will punish me if I am idle, or stir the minds of the wavering with my essays because my Church teaches me to instruct the ignorant? Not so. What sustains me is the sense that I am doing the great work of the world. In this paper, which goes forth through the length and breadth of England,' she said, tapping The Agnostic Moralist, I have the blessed consciousness that my thought and labour are working for good; and I know well that during the next few days I shall be receiving glad and joyful letters from the many that my words will have helped. In this paper, too, I can show you a list of the pictures already sent by me to the school I spoke of, which will already with form and colour be enlarging the taste and the capacities of the youngest generation of our poor.'

'Ah,' said Leigh, still standing and looking down at his companion, as she broke the paper wrapper that was still round the journal, 'you little know what manner of spirit you are of. You think you know the world; but every word said, every view expressed by you, shows me how small, how fragmentary, has been your experience of it. The little clique you have lived in, and from which all your thoughts are drawn, is but a pool by the side of the great river of life; and it may well be that it is full of reflections; but that is because there is no current in it. What you mistake for the love of humanity and the hope of progress, is a compound of two thingsthe religious feeling that you were imbued with in your youth, and your own pleasure in the fancy that you personally are a great force in the world. And what you mistake for humanity is the handful of quiet industrious and intensely self-satisfied people, who only differ from yourself in being less ingenuous. If you despise me, it must be 80; I cannot justify myself. But I am not careless, as you think I am; I am not altogether selfish, as you think I am. But I am a man

whose lot has fallen in the common world; and I am too honest to say that to be virtuous and to be unselfish would not be a struggle to me; and that I should not want to be sustained in it by some strong, vivid faith in the value of what I struggled for. How this struggle will end in my case I know not. But this I do know, that your teaching could be never any help to me. I am like a man who is lame in both feet; and what you tell me to do is to run with only one. Do not think that I do not respect and appreciate you; and do not be angry with me for saying thus much to you. Surely, did you only know it, you, too, have your weaknesses, your self-seekings, and some personal vanities, which are not quite in harmony with your social creed.'

Leigh would have gone on, as Mrs. Norham, to his surprise, made no offer to interrupt him. Her eyes were cast down, and she had been glancing at the journal in her hands. But at this moment she sank suddenly back on the seat: the journal fell on the ground; her face was quite pale, and her eyes were half-closed. Leigh with much concern asked her if she were ill. 'Nothing-nothing,' she said. Only don't speak to me for a moment.'

Thinking she must have heard bad news, Leigh picked up the paper, and began looking through it. The first paragraph that caught his eye was thus headed-' Pictures at the Free-thought Schools, Manchester, for the Children of Artisans.' Then followed

a list of pictures that had been placed in the school-room; and then, The Committee have been obliged to decline with thanks "Four Rondels in Red and Green," &c., by Sarah Norham.' He had hardly read this, when his eye was caught by yet another announcement, at the head of the first column. It ran thus: • The contemplated changes in the management of "The Agnostic Moralist" have been now satisfactorily concluded, and the Editor has much pleasure in announcing that he has secured the services of an entirely new staff of writers, which comprises none but such as are qualified to treat their several subjects in an exhaustive and masterly manner.' There was more in the same strain; and at the conclusion were these words: The following communications, which the Editor is unable to make use of, will be returned to the writers upon the pre-payment of the postage. A considerable list was appended, at the head of which figured Functional Amusement, and 'The Cellular Character of the Individual, &c.' followed it.

Leigh had many generous impulses, and he had no inclination to triumph over a wounded foe. Indeed, so little was he removed from the weakness of human sentiment that, as he looked at the suffering face and the closed eyes of his companion, his own eyes insensibly began to moisten, and a large drop, before he could intercept it, fell and made a blister on the pages of The Agnostic Moralist.

W. H. MALLOCK.

THE CLOTURE IN PARLIAMENT.

THE extraordinary 'scene' in the House of Commons, which occupied the whole of the sitting of the 14th of June, has recalled public attention to the change during recent years in the conditions of Parliamentary business. Those members who since 1877 have made the country familiar with the name of Obstruction, and the thing, have lately become cautious and learned in Parliamentary lore. Nevertheless, it is felt that new inroads are being made upon the character of the House of Commons, and that something must be done' to resist a movement which carries with it a more formidable danger than the mere postponement of Ministerial measures. But, as experience warns us, the mood in which people murmur that 'something must be done' abounds with perils of its own, which Parliament can only escape by taking pains to understand what the nature of the evil is, and what remedies are practicable. We have had more than enough of hand-to-mouth expedients adopted in the hurry of the moment,' for meeting a system of proceeding against which any serviceable precautions must be general and permanent, and entrusted to an indisputable authority.

Mr. O'Donnell's behaviour in assailing the personal character of M. Challemel Lacour, first through the medium of a question addressed to the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and afterwards upon a motion for adjournment, has met with almost unanimous condemnation. The Speaker censured the question as irregular, though when it had been placed upon the notice paper, he deemed it best that it should be publicly answered; and he also declared that the reiteration of the charges against the Ambassador under cover of a motion for adjournment' was a grave abuse of the privileges of the House. But it is to be remarked that the Speaker, in the exercise of his discretion, did not call the member for Dungarvan to order. If he had done so in the usual way, and Mr. O'Donnell had still persisted in going on with his speech, the case would have come under the standing order of the House adopted in February last, and might have been immediately disposed of without any serious delay, and without creating any disputable precedent. The standing order provides that

whenever any member shall have been named by the Speaker, or by the chairman of a committee of the whole House, as disregarding the authority of the chair, or abusing the rules of the House by persistently and wilfully obstructing the business of the House, or otherwise, then the Speaker shall forthwith put the question on a motion being made, no amendment, adjournment, or debate being allowed, 'that such member be suspended from the service of the House during the remainder of that day's sitting.'

The Speaker, however, though of opinion that Mr. O'Donnell was 'abusing the rules of the House,' as the standing order says, did not feel called upon to exercise his powers in the manner prescribed. He confined himself to admonition and advice. But the Prime Minister, the leader of the House, adopted a course which is, in the opinion of many, incapable of being justified either by general arguments or by historical examples. While Mr. O'Donnell, after the Speaker's warning, was going on with his observations, Mr. Gladstone rose to order,' but he did not invoke the Speaker's authority to enforce his call to order; he felt it his duty to give the House an opportunity of expressing its opinion on the subject by moving that Mr. O'Donnell be not heard.' The right of any member of the House to make such a motion as this was instantly challenged, not only by the Home Rule members, but by the leader of the Opposition, and we think it must now be clear to most people that it was rightly challenged. In the controversy thus raised the original matter of dispute was merged, and Mr. O'Donnell's conduct may be left without further criticism. The claim, however, made by the Prime Minister, though not formally acknowledged, has not been withdrawn. Yet it is clearly important that it should be settled without delay. If there is such a right as that asserted by Mr. Gladstone, its limits ought to be immediately ascertained and defined, and the House of Commons ought to have an opportunity of determining whether it is desirable that such a limitation of the freedom of debate should be retained. The House, manifestly, was ignorant that any such right existed; it is not alleged that there is any precedent for Mr. Gladstone's motion within the past two hundred years, and it seems very doubtful whether, even in the reign of Charles the Second or earlier, it has been recognised as a part of the law and practice of Parliament that any member, except the Speaker, could appeal to the House to prevent a member from continuing his speech. The Speaker's right appears to be fully established, not only under the standing order of February last, but under an order of the 14th of April, 1604. The fact remains that the Speaker did not choose formally to ask the House, as he might have done, to decide the question whether Mr. O'Donnell should be heard further. His abstinence from the exercise of an uncontested right cannot be held to justify any other member, however high his position, in doing what the Speaker left undone.

The difficulty of admitting Mr. Gladstone's claims was at once perceived by the leader of the Opposition, who, in accordance with his plain duty, appealed to the Speaker for his ruling on two points: (1) whether the raising of a debate on a motion for adjournment, after a Ministerial answer, was irregular, and justified a call to order; and (2) whether it was in order for any member of the House, while another member who was not out of order was in possession of the House, to rise in the middle of that member's speech and move that he be no longer heard. The Speaker's answer was not very direct, but its meaning is plain. Motions for adjournment after questions are always inconvenient, and sometimes, as in Mr. O'Donnell's case, involve a 'special impropriety,' but are not breaches of order. With respect to Mr. Gladstone's conduct, the Speaker would only say that there were instances of such a motion in the seventeenth century,' though neither then nor afterwards were particulars given of these instances. But in the seventeenth century no such personage as the leader of the House' was recognised; Charles Montague, if not Sir Robert Walpole, was the first statesman who combined the Ministerial functions and the Parliamentary authority of a leader.' The instances, therefore, whatever they may be, to which the Speaker referred, must be sufficient to cover the case of any member, leader or no leader, who chooses on what he deems adequate ground to move that a member speaking be no further heard. The validity of this inference was put to the test by a Conservative member, who, when Sir William Harcourt had opened a bitter attack upon Sir Stafford Northcote, moved, precisely as Mr. Gladstone had done in Mr. O'Donnell's case, that the Home Secretary should not be heard. The Speaker decided that Sir William Harcourt was in possession of the House,' which, however, was equally true of Mr. O'Donnell. The two decisions cannot easily be harmonised, and it is evident that they left many members at least in uncertainty, including the Prime Minister himself, the Secretary for India, the Home Secretary, and the Chief Secretary to the LordLieutenant.

Mr. Gladstone asserts that the Speaker is the guardian of order, but not the guardian of propriety in the House;' and the latter function he apparently claims as annexed to his own official position. His colleagues support the pretension in vigorous language. Lord Hartington says:

It is the duty of the leader of the House, when he sees that its forms are being abused, having a due sense of the honour and dignity of the House, to take whatever action may be necessary to prevent the degradation of its rules and forms.

Mr. Forster goes even beyond this:

It might be said, Why not leave that duty to the Speaker? His answer to that was, that the present case was an altogether exceptional one, the like of which