A service member of Parliament proposed the first resolution, and did so in a speech that would have suited any and every occasion on sea or land, in that it was made up entirely of platitudes, and included not one argument that could be seized by the most contentious; the whole brightened by what the member of Parliament himself described as a most amusing discussion which he had held with a man of the labouring classes not many years since (on which occasion the member had travelled second, this being notoriously the only way of discovering the true aspirations of the lower classes), and the member had subjected the man to a rigid cross-examination of the most preposterous and useless nature which he now repeated with many an “Ah, but I said—” and “Now listen to me, my good fellow—” and “Permit me to explain what I mean in simple words so that even you can understand,” the labouring man eventually giving in (so, at any rate, the Member declared), admitting that the gallant Member had won the game at every point—the probability being that the poor fellow, bullied and harried by a talkative bore, had done so in the interests of peace and with a desire to be let alone and allowed to read his evening paper. The service Member clearly prided himself not only on the acuteness which he had displayed in the argument, but also on the wonderful imitative faculty which enabled him to reproduce the dialect of his opponent, a dialect which seemed to have been somewhat mixed, for in one instance he spoke Lancashire with, “Aye, ah niver thowt o’ that,” and the next broad Somerset, “There be zummat in what yew zay, zir,” and anon in a strange blend of Irish and Scotch. “‘That this meeting calls upon the working classes to put aside all differences and to contribute their indispensable assistance to the new movement, from which they themselves have so much to gain.’ Will Mr. Herbert Barnes please second?”