Apart from the big debate, the most important events in Parliament have been the forcing through the Commons by means of the closure of the two ooftish Bills which were thrown out, by the Lords last year; and the most interesting has been a debate on the question of the sale of honours, started by Mr. Hillaire Belloc last night by means of s motion condemning the secrecy with which party funds accumulated and disbursed. is notorious, of course, that they are largely accumulated by means of the payments made by those who are recommended to His Majesty as fit persons to
and other titles or decoration: be honoured with peerages, nighthoods thus the debate gave another tanity to Mr. Lea of enlarging on his favourite topic. Mr. Lea informed the House in effect that the price paid by Sir Alfred Harmsworth for the privilege of calling himself Lord North-ife and making very fitful appearances in the Upper Chamber was £150,001 but of course he does not gi authority for the statement. He also ved sarcastic once more over the case of " Radical M. P. who, as he alleges, declined to congratulate a colleague on receiving a knighthood on the ground that it was a matter for commiseration rather than congratulation, and who nevertheless accepted knighthood himself a few months later, Sir Randal Cromer, the Labour-Liberal member for Huggerston, who was admittedly the member referred to, retorted by going as nearly as Parliamentary rules will allow to calling Mr. Lea " liar, and Mr, Lea's rejoinder was to refer to Sir Randal's speech as concentrated humbug," phrase which he was compelled to withdraw. ver may be the truth about Sir R. Cremer's consistency, however, he cer-cannot be included among those lents of honours who paid for their titles. His surrender of the greater part of the Nobel Peace Prize and the smallness of turn was given to the debate by Mr. Swift McNeill, who after declaring that he could name a hundred peerages whose patents were steeped in corrupt tion, suggested that all that was required to set the matter right was make the purchase of honours open and publish a regular scale of charges.
There have been some remarkable developments this week in the negotiations for the reconstruction of proprietorship of "The Times." Tuesday it was definitely a sounced that the scheme by which C. Arthar Pearson was to be Managing Director was—at all events for the time being—off the field; on the following morning" The Daily Graphic" came out with a sensational announcement to the effect that the temporary disappearance of that scheme was due to the Pearson Syndicate having been outbid by an American Syndicate, for whom Mr. Moberly Bell was acting as the prospective purchaser, with him being associated Mr. Hooper and Mr. Jackson, the gentlemen to whose enter-"The Times" Book Club,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.