without suspicion of the help of a little hot wine.
Mr. Bartley.
This Session, concurrent with the introduction of a hotly contested measure such as the Home Rule Bill, there has been a notable recrudescence of petitions. It is true nothing in the way of petition presenting has equalled the famous scene in the Session of 1890, when "the Trade" demonstrated against an attack by the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon their preserves. On that occasion the floor of the House, from within the Bar to the shadow of the Mace, was packed with gigantic wooden frames, containing massive cylinders reported to enshrine the signatures of 600,000 citizens anxious that the poor man should not have his noggin of neat spirits enhanced in price. It turned out upon inquiry, hotly made, that the Speaker, having been approached on the subject, had given his consent to the petitions being brought in. But, as he apologetically observed, he had not taken into account the wooden cases. These, towering full six feet high, entirely obscured the view between the two sides of the House.
Mr. Bartley was, by chance, making a few preliminary observations, and one at this day remembers with pleasure the keen solicitude displayed by the Radicals that the hon. member should not be embarrassed, and that they should have opportunity not only of hearing his remarks, but of benefiting by full view of the orator whilst they were delivered. They stood up in their places craning their necks so that they might catch a glimpse of him, over what one irreverently alluded to as "these vats." Suggestion was made that he should cross the gangway and continue his observations from the Treasury Bench. Mr. Labouchere bettered this by proposing, in softest voice and most winning manner, that the member for North Islington might scramble on to the top of the cases, and from that coign of vantage address the Speaker. In the end, the six House messengers who had brought in the cases one by one were summoned, and the things were ignominiously removed.
Mr. Dalziel.
WHAT BECOMES OF PETITIONS. That demonstration, which must have cost much hot wine, was not so successful as to induce repetition on similar lines. But petitions have, through the Session, still flowed in, and have, from time to time, been made the occasion for objurgatory remarks. Just after the House resumed at the close of the Easter holidays, the subject came up in piquant fashion with intent to show how vastly petitions against the Home Rule Bill preponderated. The Chairman of the Petitions Committee, whose withdrawal from Parliamentary life is regretted on both sides of the House, was asked to state the number of petitions for and against the Bill. Mr. McLagan set forth statistics which demonstrated the overwhelming activity in this field of the opponents of the measure. When the cheers this statement elicited subsided, Mr. Dalziel interposed, and read a letter
