ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

_Monday, March 26th._--Major PRETYMAN NEWMAN has a bright sense of humour
much appreciated by his fellow-countrymen from Ireland. His latest notion
is that journals "of a comic and serio-comic nature" should be deprived of
their stocks of paper in order that catalogues and circulars should
continue to appear. Mr. GEORGE ROBERTS expressed his regret at being unable
to discriminate between different classes of publications; but I understand
that several Members have offered to satisfy Major NEWMAN's taste for light
literature by lending him their old Stores catalogues.

Housewives who have been economising in their meagre supply of sugar in
order to have a stock for jam-making have been alarmed by a rumour that
they would be charged with food-hoarding and made to disgorge their
savings. There is not a word of truth in it, and they may rest assured, on
Capt. BATHURST'S authority, that our non-party Government entirely approves
this form of Conservatism.

[Illustration: MR. BRACE.]

Misled by Mr. BRACE's appearance--I have before now noted his likeness to
an amiable cat--Mr. SNOWDEN pressed his advocacy of a certain conscientious
objector called PETT to such lengths as to discover that even this kind of
cat has claws. "These conscientious objectors," said Mr. BRACE at last,
"are not the angels he thinks they are, and it is only with the utmost
difficulty that a large number of them will do anything like reasonable
work." Thus a PETT illusion has been shattered. Mr. SNOWDEN, however, has
plenty more.

_Tuesday, March 27th._--If British artisans, as at Barrow-in-Furness,