_Tuesday, April 29th._--When the House of Commons re-assembled this afternoon a good many gaps were noticeable on the green benches. They were not due, however, to the New Year's Honours, which made a belated appearance this morning, for not a single Member of Parliament has been ennobled. The notion that not one of the seven hundred is worthy of elevation is, of course, unthinkable. But by-elections are so chancy. Mr. JEREMIAH MACVEAGH still has some difficulty in realising that the Irish centre of gravity has shifted from Westminster to Dublin. He indignantly refused to accept an answer to one of his questions from little Mr. PRATT, and loudly demanded the corporeal presence of the CHIEF SECRETARY. Mr. MACPHERSON, however, considers that his duty requires him to remain in Ireland, where Mr. MACVEAGH'S seventy Sinn Fein colleagues are keeping him sufficiently busy. In explaining the swollen estimates of the Ministry of Labour, Sir ROBERT HORNE pointed out that it is now charged with the functions formerly appertaining to half-a-dozen other Departments. He has indeed become a sort of administrative _Pooh-Bah_. Unlike that functionary, however, he was not "born sneering." On the contrary, he made a most sympathetic speech, chiefly devoted to justifying the much-abused unemployment donation, which accounts for twenty-five out of the thirty-eight millions to be spent by his Department this year. But let no one mistake him for a mere HORNE of Plenty, pouring out benefits indiscriminately upon the genuine unemployed and the work-shy. He has already deprived some seventeen thousand potential domestics of their unearned increment, and he promises ruthless prosecution of all who try to cheat the State in future. Criticism was largely silenced by the Minister's frankness. Sir F. BANBURY, of course, was dead against the whole policy, and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the civilian grants; but his uncompromising attitude found little favour. Mr. CLYNES thought it would have been better for the State to furnish work instead of doles, but did not explain how in that case private enterprise was to get going. France's experience with the _ateliers nationaux_ is not encouraging, though 1919, when "demobbed" subalterns turn up their noses at £250 a year, is not 1848.