any interest in an undesirable document by an irreverent author,
but in the reluctant discharge of its solemn public duty; second,
that a terrible example must be made of me by the most crushing
public snub in the power of the Committee to administer. To throw
my wretched little pamphlet at my head and to kick me out of the
room was the passionate impulse which prevailed in spite of all
the remonstrances of the Commoners, seasoned to the give-and-take
of public life, and of the single peer who kept his head. The
others, for the moment, had no heads to keep. And the fashion in
which they proposed to wreak their vengeance was as follows.


THE SENTENCE

I was to be admitted, as a lamb to the slaughter, and allowed to
take my place as if for further examination. The Chairman was
then to inform me coldly that the Committee did not desire to
have anything more to say to me. The members were thereupon
solemnly to hand me back the copies of my statement as so much
waste paper, and I was to be suffered to slink away with what
countenance I could maintain in such disgrace.

But this plan required the active co-operation of every member of
the Committee; and whilst the majority regarded it as an august
and impressive vindication of the majesty of parliament, the
minority regarded it with equal conviction as a puerile
tomfoolery, and declined altogether to act their allotted parts
in it. Besides, they did not all want to part with the books. For
instance, Mr Hugh Law, being an Irishman, with an Irishman's
sense of how to behave like a gallant gentleman on occasion, was