MEN AND MANNER IN PARLIAMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 66, 1 August 1874, Page 9

MEN AND MANNER IN PARLIAMENT.

(From the ' Gentlemen's Magazine.) Me Disbaeli's manner in the House of Commons is one strongly marked, and is, doubtless undesignedly, calculated to increase tho personal interest which has for more than a quarter of acentury been taken in him by the public. Either because his colleagues do not care to chat with him, or because he discourages private conversations in the House, Mr Disraeli always sits apart in a sort of grim loneliness. Mr Gladstone is, except when he sleeps, rarely quiet for a moment, frequently engaging in conversation with those near Mm, often laughing heartily himself, and being the cause of laughter in his interlocutors. When Mr Disraeli enters the House and takes his accustomed seat, he crosses one leg over the other, foldß his arms, hangs down his head, and so sits for hours at a time in statuesque silence. When he rises to speak he generally rests his hand oa the table for a moment, but it is only for a moment, for he invariably endeavors to gain the ear of his audience by making a point at the outset, and the attitude which he finds conducive to the happy delivery of points is to stand balancing himself upon his feet with his hands in his coat-tail pockets. In this position, with his head hung down as if he were mentally debating how best to express a thought that has ju9t occurred to his mind, Mr Disraeli slowly utters the polished and poisoned sentences over which he has spent laborious hours in the closet. Mr Bright is a a great phrase-maker, and comes down to the house with the gems ready cut and polished to 'fit the setting of a speech. But no one could guess from Mr Bright's manner that the phrases ke drops in as he goes along are fairly written out on a slip of paper carried in his waistcoat pocket as he crossed the bar of the House. He has the art to hide his art, and his hearers may well fancy they see tho process of the formation of the sentences actually going on in the mind of the orator, all aglow as it is with the passion of eloquence. But the merest tyro in the House knows a moment beforehand when Mr Disraeli is approaching what he regards as a convenient placa iv his speech for dropping in the phrase-gem he pretends to have just found in an odd corner of his mind. They see him leading up to it ; they note the disappearance of his hands in the direction of his coat-tail pockets, sometimes in search of the pocket-handkerchief, which is brought out and shaken with a light and careless air, but most often to extend the coat-tails, whilst with body gently rocked to and fro, and an affected hesitancy of speech, the speaker produces his lon mot. For the style of repartee in which Mr Disraeli indulges — which may be generally described as a sort of solemn chaffing, varied by strokes of polished sarcasm, this manner is admirable, in proportion as it has been seldom observed.

The ' Universe ' says :—": — " The re-election of Mr Qt. H. Whalley for the borough of Peterborough appeared to us about tlve most curious, nay, mysterious fact "connected with the general election in England. We know that many constituencies in that country were remarkable for their religious bigotry, but we also thought that those constituencies, if they sought by bigoted representatives, would not at least elect men likely to bring them into ridicule. But, by all accounts, Mr Whalley and his constituents are entirely worthy of each, other. In a letter addressed to the ' Weekly Register ' by the Very Rev. Canon Seed, of Peterborough, we find the folio-wing passage :—«: — « There is in this celebrated city a public cemetery, and Catholics have a portion allotted to themselves for the burial of their dead. The enlightened Peterborough Cemetery Commissioners, into whose hands arbitrary powers are committed, which they seem to know only how to abuse, for years past have refused to allow what every devoted Catholic wishes to see on the tombstone of his departed relative or friend. "Of your charity pray for the soul of," are words forbidden by the wisdom of this Cemetery Board. Lately, the Rev. Father Duff died, and was buried at Peterborough. An unostentatious Catholic inscription was prepared, " Orate pro aninia Rev. Joannis Duff, &c, but the three first words were Btruck out by our fanatical commissioners, on the veracious grounds that it was a Protestant cemetery.' Well, indeed, may the writer ask, in conclusion, if there be known such flagrant intolerance in any other part of the civilised world."

The Polish Princess Czartoryski, recently converted to the Catholic faith, has made over the whole of her immense fortune and estate to a Catholic convent ia Posen,