wn Estimates for a day immediately after the end of a vacation. The
reasons are two. First, because Estimates give more time and opportunity
for the mere bore and obstructive than any other part of Parliamentary
business. On the Estimates, as I have often explained, every single
penny spent in the public service has to be entered. Whether that sum be
large or small makes no difference. For instance, there is a charwoman
at the Foreign Office; the charwoman's salary appears in the accounts
just as bold and just as plain as the five thousand a year which the
country has to pay for Lord Rosebery--who is cheap at the money, I must
say, lest I be misunderstood. There is associated with Buckingham Palace
a most worthy and useful individual called the ratcatcher. Everybody can
see why in such a vast and generally untenanted barrack, there should be
a ratcatcher. Well, Master Ratcatcher appears on the Estimates for
Buckingham Palace just as regularly, as plainly, in as much detail, as
my Lord High Chamberlain, Lord Carrington. There is no reason whatever
why a whole evening should not be spent in the discussion of the
ratcatcher's salary. Perhaps the reader may have heard that, in common
with many sobered and middle-aged gentlemen, I have had a pre-historic
period when I was accused--of course, unjustly--of interfering with the
progress of public business. In that period, I remember very well, the
ratcatcher of Buckingham Palace loomed largely, as well as many other
strange and portentous figures now vanished into the void and the
immensities. I don't know whether we were able to keep the Ministry
going for a whole night on the subject or not; but still we managed to
get some excellent change out of the business.

[Sidenote: The wistful Whip.]

This brief explanation will make the reader understand what it is you
can do on the Estimates, and therefore bring home to your mind the wile
of the Ministerial Whip. For his second reason for putting down the
Estimates until after vacation is, that he knows there will be a very
small attendance of members, and that thus he will be able to sneak
through his Estimates more quickly than usual. When, therefore, you hear
of a vacation in the House of Commons, you will always find that the
members ask with peculiar anxiety what is to be the first business on
the day on which the vacation concludes; and you will hear the audible
sigh of relief which will rise from hundreds of oppressed bosoms