are talking in the most amicable manner,
they pass with all in the world--including themselves--for bosom
friends; and yet at a certain moment--in a given situation--they would
stab each other in the back without compunction or hesitation, to gain a
step in the race for distinction.

[Sidenote: The dearest foes.]

Between two other men there intervenes not the space of even a seat;
they are cheek by jowl, and touching each other's coat-tails; and yet
there yawns between them a gulf of deadly and almost murderous hate
which not years, nor forgiveness, nor recollections of past comradeship
will ever bridge over. And look at the House as a whole, and what do you
see but a number of fierce ambitions, hatreds, and antipathies, natural
and acquired--the play of the worst and the deadliest passions of the
human heart? Above all things, be assured that there is scarcely one in
all this assembly whose natural stock of vanity--that dreadful heritage
we all have--has not been maximised and sharpened by the glare, the
applause, the collisions and frictions of public life. I have heard it
said that even the manliest fellow, who has become an actor, is liable
to be filled to a bursting gorge with hatred of the pretty woman who may
snatch from him a round of applause; and assuredly every nature is
liable to be soured, inflamed, and degraded by those appearances before
the gallery of the public meeting, the watchful voters, the echoing
Press, and all the other agencies that create and register public fame.

[Sidenote: Blighted hopes.]

Think of all this, and then imagine what a Prime Minister does who
proposes a scheme which will deprive some dozens of men of an
opportunity of public attention for which they have been panting and
working perchance for years. Recollect, furthermore, that the private
member may be interested in his proposal with the fanaticism of the
faddist--the relentless purpose of the philanthropist, the vehement
ardour of the reformer. Then you can understand something of the danger
which Mr. Gladstone had to face. For his motion came to this, that every
member--except one--who had a resolution on the paper which he desired
to bring before the House had to be either silenced altogether or pushed
into a horrid and ghastly hour when either he would not be listened to
by a dozen members, or would perhaps be guillotined out of a hearing by
the count out. Let me further explain, for I wish to make the whole
scene in