Why do not Mr. Whalley's friends look after him? Not
only is he degrading the demeanour of the House of Commons to that of an ordinary music-hall by the passionate desire which he seems to inspire in the members to hear him " sing," but he himself will get into a serious scrape if he is permitted to pour out all the old women's stories he picks up at watering-places in the House. On Monday night he mentioned a rumour, " worthy of contradic- tion," that a respectable young woman, a Miss Scovell, daughter of an English rector, had been brought under the influence of Mr. Wagner, of Brighton (the Puseyite confessor of Miss Constance Kent), and induced to make a will leaving 8,000/. to his institu- tion, that it was then desirable to " get rid of her;" that for that purpose she was put to hospital nursing—where, not being used to such work, nothing was more probable than that she might catch a fever—and she obligingly died. Such was Mr. Whalley's story,
"worthy," as he said, " of contradiction," and certainly of nothing else. Mr. Wagner of course wrote to The Times on Thurs- day that nobody of the name of Scovell, or any similar name, was ever an inmate of St. Mary's Hospital, that no one who has yet died has ever left anything to St. Mary's Hospital by will, and that the publication of this story is a piece of " cowardly wicked- ness" on the part of Mr. Whalley. We think the expression too strong. Mr. Whalley is a political idiot not responsible for any of his political actions, least of all his actions in relation to Romanism, or quasi-Romaniara. Peterborough should be disfranchised if it sends him again. He is obviously too much for the Speaker, whose Parliamentary intellect he will speedily reduce to the same daft condition as his own.
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