dy
Rowley's return from River's Cottage, because on that day he was
summoned to attend at twelve o'clock before a Committee of the House
of Commons, to give his evidence and the fruit of his experience as
to the government of British colonies generally; and as he went down
to the House in a cab from Manchester Street he thoroughly wished
that his friend Colonel Osborne had not been so efficacious in
bringing him home. The task before him was one which he thoroughly
disliked, and of which he was afraid. He dreaded the inquisitors
before whom he was to appear, and felt that though he was called
there to speak as a master of his art of governing, he would in truth
be examined as a servant,--and probably as a servant who did not
know his business. Had his sojourn at home been in other respects
happy, he might have been able to balance the advantage against the
inquiry;--but there was no such balancing for him now. And, moreover,
the expense of his own house in Manchester Street was so large that
this journey, in a pecuniary point of view, would be of but little
service to him. So he went down to the House in an unhappy mood; and
when he shook hands in one of the passages with his friend Osborne
who was on the Committee, there was very little cordiality in his
manner. "This is the most ungrateful thing I ever knew," said the
Colonel to himself; "I have almost disgraced myself by having this
fellow brought home; and now he quarrels with me because that idiot,
his son-in-law, has quarrelled with his wife." And Colonel Osborne
really did feel that he was a martyr to the ingratitude of his
friend.

The Committee had been convoked by the House in compliance with the
eager desires of a certain ancient pundit of the constitution, who
had been for many years a member, and who had been known as a stern
critic of our colonial modes of government. To him it certainly
seemed that everything that was, was bad,--as regarded our national
dependencies. But this is so usually the state of mind of all
parliamentary critics, it is so much a matter of course that the
members who take up the army or the navy, guns, India, our relations
with Spain, or workhouse management, should find everything to
be bad, rotten, and dishonest, that the wrath of the member for
Killicrankie against colonial peculation and idleness, was not
thought much of in the open House. He had been at the work for years,
and the Colonial Office were so used to it that they