[Illustration: _Hodge._ "I'M TO BE QUEEN OF THE MAY."]

Another little joke which tickled the House was, I suspect, the outcome of
a conspiracy. At least I cannot understand why Mr. OUTHWAITE should have
been so anxious to know the amount of ginger imported into this country
last year, unless it was to afford Mr. MACVEAGH an opportunity of asking,
when the amount, some three thousand tons, had been announced, "How is it
that the new Government has got none of it?"

There is a growing tendency on the part of Ministers, when charged with the
conduct of a Bill, to speak of it as "a poor thing not mine own." They
imagine, I suppose, that an air of deprecation, not to say depreciation, is
likely to commend the measure to an audience in which party-spirit is
supposed to be defunct.

[Illustration: VISCOUNT CHAPLIN MAKING NOTES ON THE MILLENNIUM FROM THE
PEERS' GALLERY.]

At first it seemed as if Mr. PROTHERO, in moving the second reading of the
Corn Production Bill, was going to adopt the modern attitude of
_insouciance_, for he spoke of it as "bristling with controversial points"
(as if it were intended to promote the growth of quite another kind of
corn), and observed that he himself had originally been opposed to State
interference with agriculture. But he soon warmed to his work, and spoke
with all the zeal of the convert. Among his most appreciative listeners
were the occupants of the Peers' Gallery--the Duke of MARLBOROUGH, who has
transformed the sword of Blenheim into a ploughshare, and Viscount CHAPLIN,
to whom the announcement of State bounties for wheat-growing seems like the
arrival of the Millennium.