Punch (74.1878)

February 16, 1878.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 63

what would you like to have >ow I" Sturdy Infant. " VlTTLES ! "

set a bad example the first night, and Mr. Habdy, Mr. Hall, and Mr.
Chaplin" "betteredthe instruction." Essence of Parliament should
not be flavoured with Tincture of Rough. It'may be all very natural
that Guildhall or Exeter 'Hall, or any other out-door, meetings,
should be turned into bear-gardens, enlivened with "Rule Britan-
nia"—or, worse, with the last Music-Hall-mob-tickling war-bray.
The House of Commons ought to know better. This premised, it is
hardly necessary to go into particulars of the week's angry and ex-
cited debates. And now that the collision between the Government's
demand of Six Millions, and the Opposition's. Amendment is over,
Punch begs to move his Amendment, the.^substitution of coolness
for heat, argument for recrimination, and for uncommon touchiness,
common effort for a common end—the shaping of a sound policy in
the present, and the building up in the future of more peaceful,
prosperous, and well-governed Communities—Bulgarian, Slav, and
Hellenic,—on the ground now,cumbered,with the wreck and ruin, of
what was Turkey-in-Europe.

*If the Eastern Question has not been well threshed in these
debates, it is not for want of Members threshing'each other.

May Punch quote Dr. "Watts, in a version adapted for Parlia-
mentary use ?—

" My Members, you should never let
Tour angry passions rise ;
You were not to St. Stephen's sent
To bless each other's eyes."

When Mr. Gladstone next tenders the olive-branch, it is to be
hoped Mr. Hardy won't bring' down that emblem of peace, like
a shillelagh, heavily on Mr. Gladstone's head. ,If Mr. Tre-
velyan have, like Mr. Punch, charged Lord Beaconseield with
having brought Britannia to the dizzy edge of .War, don't let the
fiery War Secretary launch the "lie" at his head even in a Par-
liamentary wrapper, but say he has drawn a rash conclusion from
unsound premises.

With this, Punch is glad to dismiss this week's work in Parlia-
ment, because—like Lord Fortescue, the Member for Newcastle,
and the Member for Hull, whom he begs to re-christen Norwood
Junction—he is an Englishman first, and a Liberal after.

After the scenes and speeches of Monday and Tuesday, no wonder
the House was flat on Wednesday, though not flat enough to give any
encouragement to Mr. Butt's Irish Land Tenure Bill, which in that
gentleman's absence from continued, indisposition, was introduced
by Mr. Macarthy Downing. This was, in Irish, a Bill for amending
Irish land tenure; in English, a Bill for converting Irish tenants
into landlords, and Irish landlords into rent-chargers. The Home-
Rulers will, no doubt, say that such a change is superfluous, seeing
that Irish landlords are nothing but rent-chargers already, and that
the measure is meant, on the contrary, to relieve landlords of their
rents in favour of their tenants. No'wonder the Bill was thrown
out by 286 to 86.

Thursday's excitement in and out of Parliament will long be
remembered. The news that the Russians, in violation of the Czar's
undertaking, and of the Armistice already signed, had occupied, or
were in the act of occupying, Constantinople, had produced a scare
on the Stock-Exchange and a feverish excitement throughout
London. A mob of medical students, said to be three thousand
strong, had paraded the streets, singing "Rule, Britannia!" and
had tried to pour their warlike enthusiasm at the feet of_ Lord
Beaconsfield. All was passion among the public, and tension in
Parliament. The spark,.it must be said, fell on combustible fuel—
blown to a white heat by the war-bellows of the Telegraph and the
Pall Mall; and none the cooler for the angry collisions and denun-
ciations of the debate on the Vote of Credit. And when Lord Derby
in the House of Lords, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in
the Commons, could only read Mr. Layard's despatch of the 5th,
brought round by way of Bombay, announcing that, in spite of
the .Armistice, .the Russians were pushing on towards Constan-
tinople ; that the Turkish troops had been compelled to evacuate
Silivria, a port on the Sea of Marmora, notwithstanding the protest
of the Turkish Commander, which the Russian General refused to
receive (declaring that, according to his orders, it was necessary
that he should occupy Tchataldja, a part of the Turkish lines of
defence, that day;) that the Porte was in great alarm, and could not
understand the Russian proceedings; that representations had
again been made to the Grand Duke Nicholas ; that the Servians
had taken a place called Vranja, and were advancing on Uskup,