obliging of Ministers, agreed to alter the word "cost" to "net cost." I
hope no litigious farmer will seek to evade his liabilities on the
ground that, as the Act only says "net cost," he need not pay for the
ferrets.

_Tuesday, August 7th._--Those peers who were supposed to be shaking in
their shoes at the thought of Lord SELBORNE'S impending revelations as
to the means by which they acquired their honours might have spared
their tremors. He opened his bag to-day, but no cat jumped out, not even
the smallest kitten. If he had given a single concrete example of a peer
who, having notoriously no public services at his back, must be presumed
to have purchased his title, he would have created some effect. But the
admission that all his information on the subject was confidential cut
the ground from under his feet; and needless to say none of the Peers
whom he hypothetically accused of buying their coronets responded to his
appeal by standing forth in a white sheet and making open confession of
his crime.

[Illustration: THE FOUNT OF HONOUR AT WORK.

LORD CURZON CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT.]

Lord SELBORNE was one of three heirs to peerages who a generation ago
banded themselves together to resist elevation to the House of Lords.
Another of them is Lord CURZON, who answered him to-night, and whose
contempt for the Chamber which he now adorns seems to have grown with
the years that he has spent in it. Reading between the lines of his
speech a cynic could only infer that the Upper House, as at present
constituted, is such a useless and superfluous assembly that it does not
much matter who gets into it or by what venal ladder he climbs.