At a West Hertfordshire agricultural dinner held on Thursday, Mr.
H. R. Brand, ALP. for Herts, in answering to the toast of "The Houses of Lords and Commons and county members," said " he trusted he should never live to see the time when the Second Chamber would be dispensed with. Whatever reform it might require, no greater calamity could befall the country than to leave undisputed sway to the popular Assembly,"— from which we gather that Mr. Brand thinks there are advantages in having horses to drag different ways. We cannot see it ourselves. We can appreciate the advantage of a steady- going horse that keeps his yokefollow from starting and rearing, and yet helps him to draw all the same. But a horse which tries to steady his companion by standing stock- still, however quietly the other may be going forward, does seem to us a sort of anomaly which it takes a positive passion for anomalies to endure. Perhaps Mr. I-I. R. Brand is that very Member of Parliament who once said to Mr. Matthew Arnold that to show that any institution was an anomaly, was to him only a fresh argument in its favour.
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