class="smcap">Speaker asleep in his chair":—

"Hume, no doubt, will be taking the sense Of the House on a saving of thirteen pence."

But there were differences. The £10 was not an ordinary "ten-pun' note" but was a "token" representing something like four and a half millions received by the Fleet for services rendered to Foreign Powers and others; and Mr. Whitley, who was in the Chair, too so far from being asleep, was intensely wide-awake. Members who sought to discuss Naval policy generally were promptly pulled up, and the Secretary of the Admiralty, when in his third or fourth attempt to explain the Vote he remarked hypothetically, "Suppose we were to sell a battleship——" was himself called to order, Mr. Whitley evidently regarding such a reduction of the Fleet as unpatriotic even in imagination.

A vote for £37,000 to extend the British Consulate buildings at Cairo united both sides of the House in criticism. Mr. Ashley thought what was good enough for Lord Cromer should be good enough for his successor. Mr. Hogge, by a somewhat obscure process of reasoning, now understood why the Germans were so anxious to get to Egypt. In vain Mr. Lewis Harcourt, usually so persuasive, explained that they were now buying for £3 10s. a metre land for which the owner wanted £12 a metre not long ago. Sir F. Banbury, shaking his pince-nez at the Treasury Bench, retorted that he might ask £5 for this pair of glasses, for which he had paid half-a-crown (more war economy), but he would not expect to get it.

A vote for £50,000, to complete the purchase of the estate of Colonel Hall-Walker, who has presented his racing stud to the Government, evoked some opposition and much facetiousness. Mr. Acland, who proposed it, did not help his case by remarking that personally he regarded racing as a low form of sport. The fact that some of the horses have been leased by the War Department to Lord Lonsdale for racing purposes "on sharing terms" caused Mr. McNeill to inquire whether Mr. Tennant would act as the Ministerial tipster; and Mr. Hogge, who displayed a knowledge of racing which will, I fear, shock the unco' guid of East Edinburgh, thought it ridiculous that Ministers should preach economy in the City and start a racing stud at Westminster.