MR. STANLEY'S BREACH OF DECORUM.
Ma. STANLEY has made it " his custom always in the afternoon" to indulge his ease, at the expense of good taste and propriety, by lolling on the Treasury bench with his heels "cocked up on the table,"* to the great scandal of the House, and the particular an- noyance of honourable gentlemen opposite. This free and easy style of Mr. STANLEY has hurt the feelings of Members more than his snappish tone and somewhat overbearing manner. It is not a very gentlemanlike habit, certainly; and, in a less privileged person, would have been deemed offensive to the Speaker if not to the House. What will Mrs. Tents() PE say ? Had she, who could not tolerate such a pasture in a vulgar Yankee at a coffeehouse, witnessed such a sight as a high-bred scion of the English Aristo- cracy, and a Minister of State, making a footstool of the table of the House of Commons, flinging up his feet among law-books and despatch-boxes, kicking aside the mace, trampling on a petition,
.• so reported in the Renting Post. The other reports differ in the wording of Mr. RONAYDIVS
-thrusting his toes under the nose of the Clerks, and exhibiting his lower extremities to the view of the Opposition benches—ab- solutely runaping "his Majesty's Opposition"—she would have swooned away, and perchance have fallen through the ventilator into the Speaker's lap.
It was only the other night that this piece of ill-breeding, which has been complained of privately by sensitive Members any time these two years, was noticed publicly ; and then Mr. RONAYNE was provoked to it by one of Mr. STANLEY'S sarcastic smiles. This is accounted for not by any feeling of fear Or deference to Mr. STANLEY, but to the knowledge that so many greater nuisances and more flagrant breaches of decorum have been nightly com- mitted. Yawning and snoring may be unavoidable under the -Narcotic influence of seine drowsy orators ; but Members need not settle themselves to sleep on the benches as on a camp-bed, nor yawn so ostentatiously ; any more than they are compelled to manifest their asinine natures by braying, or their dunghill va- lorous contempt for decency by cock-crowing. Mr. RONAYNE might have done better than notice Mr. STAN- IAA's offence angrily. Instead of making a serious matter of it, he should have moved that the right honourable gentleman " do lie upon the table :" which being carried as a matter of course, tha officers of the House would have gravely proceeded to place the corpas delidi of the Colonial Secretary on the floor underneath— that being the place where petitions are deposited; and then the Irish Agitators would have had their implacable foe at their feet. A reform in a bear-garden, beginning with the bear-leader, is pretty sure of being carried into effect with the whole ursine com- munity. We hope, therefore, that the House of Commons is in a fair way to learn manners better fitted for an assembly of legisla- tors titan those of a cock-pit.
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