recalled in print, and it is too good to be buried in the pages of Hansard. At one time, in the run of the Parliament of 1859-65, Lord Palmerston being Premier, a rumour shook the political world, affirming the resignation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone. The newspapers were neither so alert nor so well informed in those days, and the rumour drifted about, neither confirmed nor contradicted. At length, Mr. Horsman could stand the uncertainty no longer, and from his place in the House of Commons he asked Lord Palmerston whether there was any truth in the report.
The Premier approached the table in his gravest manner, and the crowded House was hushed in silence for the anticipated disclosure. He had, he said, just come from a meeting of the Cabinet Council, and could not pretend to be uninformed on the matter of the question submitted to him. The House, however, knew how stringent was the oath of a Privy Councillor, and how impossible it was for one in ordinary circumstances either to affirm or deny a report current as to what had taken place within its doors. Lord Palmerston was evidently struggling between a desire to tell something and disinclination to tamper with his oath. As his manner grew more embarrassed, the interest of the House was quickened. All heads, including that of Mr. Horsman, were craned forward as he went on to observe that, perhaps, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, he would be justified in saying that, at the Council just held, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been present and had displayed no sign of intended resignation.
"In fact," said Lord Palmerston, turning round to face Mr. Horsman, seated at the corner bench below the Gangway, "my right hon. friend has had his ear at the keyhole of the wrong door."
THE PAR-LIAMENTARY OLD GUARD.
I have received a sheaf of correspondence arising out of the article in the February number, cataloguing the Old Guard who were in the House of Commons twenty years ago and stand there to-day. One or two demand acknowledgment as adding to the information there garnered. Mr. Thomas Whitworth, of Liverpool, a member of the House of Commons from 1869 to 1874, has made independent investigation, with the result of adding several to the names I gave. These are Sir Charles Dalrymple, Mr. Duff (who has just retired from Parliament on his appointment to the Governorship of New South Wales), Sir Julian Goldsmid, Sir John Hibbert, Sir J. W. Pease, Mr. J. G. Talbot, Mr. Abel Smith, and Mr. James Round. Mr. Whitworth adds Mr. Charles Seeley. That is an error, since Mr. Seeley does not sit in the present Parliament—having been defeated at the General Election when he stood for the Rushcliffe Division of Nottinghamshire.
Mr. Duff.
"Sir Thomas Lea (not Mr. Lea) was, in 1873," Mr. Whitworth writes, "member for Kidderminster, and is the only English member of that date who has changed into an Irish one."
The present member for Londonderry was certainly "Mr." Lea in 1873, his baronetcy dating from 1892, being one of the recognitions made by Lord Salisbury of the services of the Dissentient Liberal allies. The reference to Sir William Dyke as Liberal Whip was, as the context shows, an obvious slip of the pen, Sir William having been for many years prominent in the Conservative ranks as an able Whip.
One of the late Mr. Miall's kinsmen points out that "it was Edward Miall, M.P. for Bradford, not Charles," who, side by side with the late Mr. Fawcett, fought Mr. Gladstone on the Irish University Bill, and did much to bring about the subsequent débâcle of the Liberals.
Finally, Mr. Johnston, of Ballykilbeg, writes from the House of Commons: "In your interesting paper, 'From Behind the Speaker's Chair,' in The Strand Magazine for this month, you say, 'Mr. Johnston, still of Ballykilbeg, but no longer a Liberal, as he ranked twenty years ago.' In politics I am to-day what I was twenty years ago. Always anxious to vote for measures for the good of the country, and sometimes being in the Lobby with Liberals, I never belonged to that party. Mr. Disraeli, in a letter which
