It was a simple question; Question 63. Not ten minutes of question-time were left when it was asked. It was put by a gentle little man who had put it down for the sake of a friend who lived on the South Coast, and it was simply to ask the right honourable Baronet, the Warden of the Court of Dowry, whether his attention had been called to the presence upon the Royal Sovereign shoals of a wreck which endangered navigation, and what he intended to do in the matter. Charles Repton jumped up like a bird; he jovially and rapidly read the typewritten answer which his permanent officials had given him--to the effect that he had nothing to add to the reply given three years before with regard to the same wreck, which was then, they were careful to point out, far more dangerous than at the present day. But when he had finished reading the official reply, he looked up genially at his interlocutor and said: “We don’t want to interfere with that wreck: it’s full of gin!” An angry fanatic hearing the word “gin” rose at once and put the supplementary question: “May I ask whether that gin was destined for the unfortunate natives of the Lagos Hinterland?” “Yes,” said the Warden of the Court of Dowry politely, “Yes sir, you may: but they will never get it. However, several thousand tons of gin I am glad to say have gone out to the negroes of our colonies since the ship was lost, to the no small advantage,” he added, “of my friend Mr. Garey; whom, by the way,” he continued with conversational ease, “we all hope to see in this House shortly, for old Southwick who’s up against him hasn’t got a dog’s chance, and you probably know that we are forcing Pipps to resign. Bound to be an election!” He sat down. It was a quarter to four and the House was saved. But though the decorum of that great assembly prevented one word from being uttered as to what had passed, the Lobbies were full of it, and when the first division was taken men who ordinarily filed past the Treasury bench avoided it, while from distant and dark corners where one cannot be observed, long and intent looks were darted at the happy Warden of the Court of Dowry. He sat there gay and quite unconscious of the effect he had produced, passed with his Party into the Lobbies for the division, greeting with familiar joy men who appeared rather anxious to avoid his eye, and making, I regret to say, such unseemly jests upon the Party system as had never been heard within those walls before.