On Thursday evening Mr. Healy made an unblushing effort to
compel the First Lord of the Treasury to explain the resolve of the Government on a subject on which they had not, as Mr. Smith told him, taken any resolve,—namely, the course to be adopted in regard to public business after the inconclusive Conservative meeting at the Carlton. The Speaker very properly refused to allow Mr. Healy to move the adjournment of the House, in order " to call attention to a matter of urgent public importance," but the evening was not the less wasted. Mr. Arthur Acland's ridiculous amend- ment on the Local Taxation Bill, an amendment which proposes to spend on education the sum raised expressly for extinguishing licences, was under discussion the whole of the evening, though it had also been under discussion on a previous evening, and the division was not taken before the discussion stood adjourned. A more deliberate waste of the time of the House of Commons has not been recorded during the present Session.
