t the people in the colonies should mind their business and grow
coffee. When asked what would be the effect upon the islands, under
his scheme of government, if an incoming Colonial Secretary should
change the policy of his predecessor, he said that he didn't think it
would much matter if the people did not know anything about it.

In this way the Major had a field day, and poor Sir Marmaduke
was much discomfited. There was present on the Committee a young
Parliamentary Under-Secretary, who with much attention had studied
the subject of the Court of Chancery in the Mandarins, and who had
acknowledged to his superiors in the office that it certainly was of
all legislative assemblies the most awkward and complicated. He did
what he could, by questions judiciously put, to pull Sir Marmaduke
through his difficulties; but the unfortunate Governor had more than
once lost his temper in answering the chairman; and in his heavy
confusion was past the power of any Under-Secretary, let him be ever
so clever, to pull him through. Colonel Osborne sat by the while and
asked no questions. He had been put on the Committee as a respectable
dummy; but there was not a member sitting there who did not know that
Sir Marmaduke had been brought home as his friend;--and some of them,
no doubt, had whispered that this bringing home of Sir Marmaduke
was part of the payment made by the Colonel for the smiles of the
Governor's daughter. But no one alluded openly to the inefficiency of
the evidence given. No one asked why a Governor so incompetent had
been sent to them. No one suggested that a job had been done. There
are certain things of which opposition members of Parliament complain
loudly;--and there are certain other things as to which they are
silent. The line between these things is well known; and should an
ill-conditioned, a pig-headed, an underbred, or an ignorant member
not understand this line and transgress it, by asking questions which
should not be asked, he is soon put down from the Treasury bench, to
the great delight of the whole House.

Sir Marmaduke, after having been questioned for an entire afternoon,
left the House with extreme disgust. He was so convinced of his own
failure, that he felt that his career as a Colonial Governor must be
over. Surely they would never let him go back to his islands after
such an exposition as he had made of his own ignorance. He hurried
off into a cab, and was ashamed to be seen of men. But th