What is the Minister to do?  He never heard of this matter; he does not care about the matter.  Several of the supporters of the Government are interested in the opposition to the department; a grave man, supposed to be wise, mutters, “This is too bad”.  The Secretary of the Treasury tells him, “The House is uneasy.  A good many men are shaky.  A. B. said yesterday he had been dragged through the dirt four nights following.  Indeed I am disposed to think myself that the department has been somewhat lax.  Perhaps an inquiry,” etc., etc.  And upon that the Prime Minister rises and says:  “That Her Majesty’s Government having given very serious and grave consideration to this most important subject, are not prepared to say that in so complicated a matter the department has been perfectly exempt from error.  He does not indeed concur in all the statements which have been made; it is obvious that several of the charges advanced are inconsistent with one another.  If A. had really died from eating green coffee on the Tuesday, it is plain he could not have suffered from insufficient medical attendance on the following Thursday.  However, on so complex a subject, and one so foreign to common experience, he will not give a judgment.  And if the honourable member would be satisfied with having the matter inquired into by a committee of that House, he will be prepared to accede to the suggestion.”

Possibly the outlying department, distrusting the Ministry, crams a friend.  But it is happy indeed if it chances on a judicious friend.  The persons most ready to take up that sort of business are benevolent amateurs, very well intentioned, very grave, very respectable, but also rather dull.  Their words are good, but about the joints their arguments are weak.  They speak very well, but while they are speaking, the decorum is so great that everybody goes away.  Such a man is no match for a couple of House of Commons gladiators.  They pull what he says to shreds.  They show or say that he is wrong about his facts.  Then he rises in a fuss and must explain:  but in his hurry he mistakes, and cannot find the right paper, and becomes first hot, then confused, next inaudible, and so sits down.  Probably he leaves the House with the notion that the defence of the department has broken down, and so the Times announces to all the world as soon as it awakes.

Some thinkers have naturally suggested that the heads of departments should as such have the right of speech in the House.  But the system when it has been tried has not answered.  M. Guizot tells us from his own experience that such a system is not effectual.  A great popular assembly has a corporate character; it has its own privileges, prejudices, and notions.  And one of these notions is that its own members—­the persons it sees every day—­whose qualities it knows, whose minds it can test, are those whom it can most trust.  A clerk speaking from without would be an unfamiliar object.  He would be an