MAJOR MAGRUDER'S COMMITTEE.
[Illustration]
Sir Marmaduke could not go out to Willesden on the morning after Lady
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 rather liked
him. He had made himself free of the office, and the clerks were
always glad to see him. It was understood that he said bitter things
in the House,--that was Major Magruder's line of business; but he
could be quite pleasant when he was asking questions of a private
secretary, or telling the news of the day to a senior clerk. As he
was now between seventy and eighty, and had been at the work for at
least twenty years, most of those concerned had allowed themselves
to think that he would ride his hobby harmlessly to the day of his
parliamentary death. But the drop from a house corner will hollow
a stone by its constancy, and Major Magruder at last persuaded the
House to grant him a Committee of Inquiry. Then there came to be
serious faces at the Colonial Office, and all the little pleasantries
of a friendly opposition were at an end. It was felt that the battle
must now become a real fight, and Secretary and Under-Secretary
girded up their loins.
Major Magruder was chairman of his own committee, and being a man
of a laborious turn of mind, much given to blue-books, very patient,
thoroughly conversant with the House, and imbued with a strong belief
in the efficacy of parliamentary questionings to carry a point, if
not to elicit a fact, had a happy time of it during this session.
He was a man who always attended the House from 4 p.m. to the time
of its breaking up, and who never missed a division. The slight
additional task of sitting four hours in a committee-room three days
a week, was only a delight the more,--especially as during those four
hours he could occupy the post of chairman. Those who knew Major
Magruder well did not doubt but that the Committee would sit for many
weeks, and that the whole theory of colonial government, or rather of
imperial control supervising such government, would be tested to the
very utmost. Men who had heard the old Major maunder on for years
past on his pet subject, hardly knew how much vitality would be found
in him when his maundering had succeeded in giving him a committee.
A Governor from one of the greater colonies had already been under
question for nearly a week, and was generally thought to have come
out of the fire unscathed by the flames of the Major's criticism.
This Governor had been a picked man, and he had made it appear that
the control of Downing Street was never more harsh and seldom less
refreshing and beautifying than a spring shower in April. No other
lands under the sun were so blest, in the way of government, as were
the colonies with which he had been acquainted; and, as a natural
consequence, their devotion and loyalty to the mother country were
quite a passion with them. Now the Major had been long of a mind that
one or two colonies had better simply be given up to other nations,
which were more fully able to look after them than was England, and
that three or four more should be allowed to go clear,--costing
England nothing, and owing England nothing. But the well-chosen
Governor who had now been before the Committee, had rather staggered
the Major,--and things altogether were supposed to be looking up for
the Colonial Office.
And now had come the day of Sir Marmaduke's martyrdom. He was first
requested, with most urbane politeness, to explain the exact nature
of the government which he exercised in the Mandarins. Now it
certainly was the case that the manner in which the legislative and
executive authorities were intermingled in the affairs of these
islands, did create a complication which it was difficult for any man
to understand, and very difficult indeed for any man to explain to
others. There was a Court of Chancery, so called, which Sir Marmaduke
described as a little parliament. When he was asked whether the court
exercised legislative or executive functions, he said at first that
it exercised both, and then that it exercised neither. He knew that
it consisted of nine men, of whom five were appointed by the colony
and four by the Crown. Yet he declared that the Crown had the control
of the court;--which, in fact, was true enough no doubt, as the five
open members were not perhaps, all of them, immaculate patriots; but
on this matter poor Sir Marmaduke was very obscure. When asked who
exercised the patronage of the Crown in nominating the four members,
he declared that the four members exercised it themselves. Did he
appoint them? No; he never appointed anybody himself. He consulted
the Court of Chancery for everything. At last it came out that the
chief justice of the islands, and three other officers, always sat in
the court;--but whether it was required by the constitution of the
islands that this should be so, Sir Marmaduke did not know. It had
worked well; that was to say, everybody had complained of it, but
he, Sir Marmaduke, would not recommend any change. What he thought
best was that the Colonial Secretary should send out his orders, and
that 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 the members
of the Committee thought little or nothing about it. The Major, and
those who sided with him, had been anxious to entrap their witness
into contradictions and absurdities, for the furtherance of their own
object; and for the furtherance of theirs, the Under-Secretary from
the Office and the supporters of Government had endeavoured to defend
their man. But, when the affair was over, if no special admiration
had been elicited for Sir Marmaduke, neither was there expressed
any special reprobation. The Major carried on his Committee over
six weeks, and succeeded in having his blue-book printed; but, as
a matter of course, nothing further came of it; and the Court of
Chancery in the Mandarin Islands still continues to hold its own,
and to do its work, in spite of the absurdities displayed in its
construction. Major Magruder has had his day of success, and now
feels that Othello's occupation is gone. He goes no more to the
Colonial Office, lives among his friends on the memories of his
Committee,--not always to their gratification,--and is beginning to
think that as his work is done he may as well resign Killicrankie to
some younger politician. Poor Sir Marmaduke remembered his defeat
with soreness long after it had been forgotten by all others who had
been present, and was astonished when he found that the journals of
the day, though they did in some curt fashion report the proceedings
of the Committee, never uttered a word of censure against him, as
they had not before uttered a word of praise for that pearl of a
Governor who had been examined before him.
On the following morning he went to the Colonial Office by
appointment, and then he saw the young Irish Under-Secretary whom he
had so much dreaded. Nothing could be more civil than was the young
Irish Under-Secretary, who told him that he had better of course stay
in town till the Committee was over, though it was not probable that
he would be wanted again. When the Committee had done its work he
would be allowed to remain six weeks on service to prepare for his
journey back. If he wanted more time after that he could ask for
leave of absence. So Sir Marmaduke left the Colonial Office with a
great weight off his mind, and blessed that young Irish Secretary as
he went.