EX-MINER PEER.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1458, 5 June 1912, Page 9

EX-MINER PEER.

« ; — DIFFICULTY OF SPEAKING IN A . COLD HOUSE OF LORDS! In a maiden speech, in the House of Lords on the Minimum Wage Bill on March 27, the Eavl of HarcUvicko related some of his personal experiences as a miner in America, aud concluded: "My lords, I apologise for making what I knowto be a very poor speech, though I had intended to make a very good one." . Lord Hardwicke, who is forty-two and has been a miner, a prospector in Australia, an engineer, motorist, balloonist, and airman in turn, and does not look as

if he were lacking in nerve, described to a "Daily Mail" representative the ordeal lie found it to stand up and address the House of Lords. "I am disappointed in my speech. There were a great many other points I wished to make and arguments whicl) I touched upon that I wanted to elaborate. Tho House of Lords seems to atrophy your brains, and I could not say things I had meant to. "I speak quite extempore, and before I got up there were several aspects of the case I wanted to go into. When I began I was confident of making my meaning clear, but as a went on I do not seem to have succeeded. • The whole atmosphere of the House is cold to speak in. I meant to bring out a nice new-laid egg, and I found it was an addled one. It required a great deal of courage, to begin with, for me to get up and speak in tho House at all, but I felt that I knew something about the mining question, and I ought to say what I thought if I could. "I am a Socialist," continued Lord Hardwicke, who is a frequenter of the Carlton Club, "but not of the same kind as the leaders of this strike movement, who are all for destruction, aud when they have destroyed everything there will bo nothing to build the honse up again with."