On Tuesday a bitter little conversation on the no-progress made
by the House began, which gave occasion to Mr. Mundella to remark rather sharply on Lord Elcho's proposed determination, as long as five Members would join him, to go into the lobby against every proposal limiting freedom of contract. " The noble lord," said Mr. Mundella, " was always ready to trot up and down the house the pony which Tennyson called 'proputty, proputty, proputty,' to the no small danger of cantering away with everything that was good and useful for the country," like education and justice to Ireland. Lord Elcho was so much irritated by this observation, that he could think of nothing in reply except the remarks that he had been between twenty and thirty years in the House, and ought not to be lectured by one who had been only two ; that persons to whom the "name of Lord Palmerston" was something more than an empty sound ought not to be dragooned into silence ; and that Mr. Mundella's only claim to notice was his having patented a system of recon- ciliation between workmen and employers, which had, in fact, been in use long before Mr. Mundella adopted it. ' This was poor repartee for Lord Elcho, who really can in general talk well when he feels satisfied with himself, as he usually does. It was a great debating triumph for Mr. Mundella to have cut short a complete series of Lord Eloho's smiles—which melt away into each other like dissolving views,—and made him positively gloom for once.
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