On Wednesday the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved that the
Committees of the House should not sit on Thursday, that being Ascension Day, till 2 o'clock. Mr. Mlles objected. Every one knew, he said, that this solicitude for Church worship was a mere fiction and a sham. The only Members who would really go to church were the Catholic Members, and their mass would be over long before 12 o'clock. No doubt the tone of Mr. Byles's speech was unnecessarily cross and raspy, but on the whole we are inclined to think he was in the right. At any rate, it was utterly prepos- terous for Sir Michael Hicks-Beach to say as he did that "anything more execrable he had never heard in that House." The ill-temper of the whole proceedings shows to what a pitch of demoralisation the House has already reached. James I. used to say that Parliaments were like cats, and grew cursed (i.e., cross and spiteful) with age, but here is a House not three years old which spits and swears at nothing and everything like a surly old tom. It should be in its seventh year, to judge by its temper.
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