“It was Admiral Fisher’s fault,” said the young lady; “directly he was made Governor of Manchester he made such a tactless speech; on purpose, of course, to incite the people to rise.” “He simply said he wasn’t going to have any nonsense, and he meant to keep order in the town,” said the commercial traveller. “Provocation! Provocation!” said the workman and the young lady in chorus. “The people in Manchester ought to have waited for Parliament to be summoned,” said the old gentleman, who was reading the _Standard_. “Wait, wait, wait; that’s all everybody has to tell us,” said the young man. “We got very little from the first Parliament, and now they’re going to dissolve this one, I suppose.” “Who?” I asked. “Why, the Government, of course,” said the young man. “Excuse me,” I said. “I am a stranger and I don’t quite understand. I don’t know what’s been happening in this country.” “Well,” said the old man, “I suppose you know that two years ago after the disastrous war in South Africa, and the disorders and the general strike which followed it, the Government, acting under the advice of Sir Ernest Cassel, the Prime Minister, decided to re-establish the old liberties granted by the Magna Charta and to summon a Parliament--a thing which had not occurred since the days of Oliver Cromwell. A manifesto was issued in this sense, promising that henceforth no new laws should be passed without the consent of the people, and that a Parliament would shortly be summoned. This was taken by the whole population to mean that the autocratic powers of the Monarch were to be limited, and that the Government would henceforward be constitutional. In the meantime no laws were promulgated, but the newspapers for the first time for three hundred years began to write what they pleased; all the Jews in the East End were massacred by hooligans at the instigation of the Jacobites; many of the University dons were sent to the Hebrides, and some of them to the Isle of Man and New Zealand; the administration of the country continued to be in the hands of the military governors instituted by Cromwell and confirmed by Charles II., and everything went jogging on until January, and since there was to be a Parliament general elections had to be held. The task of making an electoral law was entrusted to an official belonging to the Board of Trade, who devised a law according to which the labouring class should elect a member of their class for each borough, and besides this should have a vote in the election of the remaining representatives of the borough. This was done because the Government believed that the labouring classes were fundamentally loyal and would prove Conservative. The result of the elections was a triumphant majority for the Liberals, who were represented by the flower of the English gentry, among them being Lord Lansdowne, Lord Wemyss, and also by the most eminent names of the Bar, science and literature, such as Asquith,