Punch (74.1878)

112

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON



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A PRACTICAL APPLICATION.

Irate Landlord {and Free-Kirk Elder, after being called in, for the fiftieth time,
about some Repairs). " The fact is, Mrs. McRackkt, ye 'll ne'er be content
till te 're i' the Hoose maue wi'our Hand?."—{Severely.)—"See Second
Corinthians, Fifth Chapter, and Fikrst Vairse, Mrs. McRacket !"

Sir Stafford Nortecote explained to Mr. Sullivan that the Irish Sunday-
Closing Bill is not a child of the Government, so they must decline to take
parental charge of it, having more legislative babies of tbeir own than they can
attend to. But they would do all they could for it, and even hoped to be able
to find it a day.

Take it, Mr. Sullivan, and be thankful, though your day be a long day.

Mr. Bekesford Hope pleaded the cause of the National Portrait Collection,
now stowed away over several of the many highly inflammable lumber-rooms
at South Kensington. Everybody was ashamed ; and Colonel Stanley olfered
to give up to the Portraits the lumber-rooms down-stairs, now failed with old
desks and cases of pencils.

Hope had perhaps told a more flattering tale to his British "Worthies, but
in this country and in these times it behoves guardians of National Art Trea-
sures to be thankful for small mercies. At least, the Trustees may get rid
of the present stock of combustibles which threatens their grave and reverend
canvasses with as grievous a fate as James's Lords and Commons—nay, a more
ignominious one, in so far as it is baser to fall a sacrifice to South Kensington
old stores than to Gruy-Fawkes gunpowder-barrels.

Messrs. Bright and Chamberlain asked that the Birmingham Town Council
might have full sway of the Birmingham Grammar School, instead of eight
seats out of twenty-one on the governing body, as under the scheme now laid
on the Table.

Believing that you can't give Municipal Authorities too much power if you
want to enlist and employ the best local ability, Punch might regret, on general
principles, that this principle should be limited in Birmingham. At the same
time eight governors out of twenty-one is not a bad share, particularly when
three of them are responsible representatives of the Universities, and all are
to be elected, it some indirectly.

Wednesday.—An Ash Wednesday House, late, thin, and flat, but for the fun
it got out of the dear delightful Major, moving his Bill to assimdate Irish to
English Municipal Franchise.

Till an English Borough can boast an Alderman like the Major, let no one
talk of such assimilation. In English boroughs all ratepayers vote, male or
female. In Ireland only ratepayers for £10 houses, and Irish women not at all.
Naturally, the Major resents this, and so does Mr. Punch. He loves Ireland's

violet-eyed and dark-lashed maidens, and is prepared to
trust them with votes for a Town Councilman, even
where they have developed into the less ideal form of
Irish matrons. By next year the Major hopes Mr. Low-
ther will have become " Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores "—
in his large liberality, giving the new Secretary the
benefit of the plural number. Why did he correct him-
self ? And oh, why did the Speaker cut him short in
that eloquent outburst, beginning so promisingly-

"If we lived under the knout of the barbarian of the
North, of that perfidious filibuster who, he was sorry

to see, had just completed"-not a climax for the

Major, for at this point he had to knock under to a call to
order from the Chair, to the great grief of his audience.

Mr. Kavanagh objected to the Bill, as anticipating the
report of the Select Committee now sitting on the hard
eag of Irish Local Government. Dublin has a Household
Municipal Suffrage, said Mr. Kavanagh, and see the
result. The Corporation is a political debating society,
heavily in debt, the streets are quagmires, and the Liffey
a common sewer.

In spite of Home-Rulers' protests, and Mr. M. Brooks's
magnanimous admission that the Corporation of Dublin
was not perfect, the Select Committee argument carried
the day for the Government against the Major, but
only by a squeak of 165 to 160.

Thursday {Lords). - Cleopatra ought to be much
obliged to the Duke of Somerset for asking whether
they weren't going to "glaze" her Needle, by way of
protecting its hieroglyphics from the destructive effects
of the London air—so-called. The Duke of Richmond
promised to inquire.

The Macallum-More proceeded to prove that there
had been no violation of the Treaties of 1856, but that
Turkey had only got her deserts, for not having done
what she ought to have done after the Crimean War.

The Duke of Somerset protested against hitting the
Turk now he was down.

Lord Hammond, as in old Foreign-Office duty bound,
did not agree in the Macalltjm-More's reading of the
Treaties (what business have outsiders with reading
Treaties ?), but admitted, in effect, that both Treaties
and Turk were dead and done for, which seemed a very
general opinion among their Lordships—always excepting
that Abdiel, Lord Stratheden, and Lord Faversham,
for the fire-eaters.

By this time the House had dribbled down to the
normal emptiness of its prandial period, and it was to
a beggarly account of empty benches that Lord Derby
explained that whatever might be the meaning, or
worth, of the guarantee of the independence and in-
tegrity of the Ottoman Empire, in the 7th Article of
the Tripartite Treaty, it did not involve an obligation on
the guaranteeing parties to go to war. Still less did it
bind us to interfere on behalf of the subject populations.
(In fact—not to put too fine a point on it, my Lord—you
do not see that it binds us to anything in particular.)
The Government had done all it could to prevent war,
short of fighting, or threatening to fight. It was forced
to be neutral, because the country wouldn't stand fighting
for the Turks. It couldn't urge the Russian terms of
peace on the Turks in the summer, because they thought
then they had a chance of getting the best of it. And,
in short, the state of things contemplated in 1856 and
1871 is a state of things which has ceased to exist; and
our business in the Conference will be to do our best to
bring about a settlement in a European, and not an ex-
clusively Russian sense, one that shall be durable, as far
as we can make it so, and that shall hold the balance
fairly between different races and creeds. But we must
not be such fools as to suppose that the Conference will
have an easy task before it. (Are there such fools ?)
We will do our best to bring about a satisfactory result;
but what the result will be, it would be unwise in any
man to attempt to predicate.

A douche of cool, if somewhat faint-hearted, common
sense, highly unacceptable to Lord Detnraven and other
Lords of the fighting sort.

{Commons.)—Mr. Gerard Noel gave the satisfactory
assurance that the building in progress in Hyde Park is
nothing more formidable than a new tool-house.

Mr. Smith told Mr. Ashley that H.M.S. Rapid has
been already authorised to carry off from the coast of
Epirus women and children in danger of outrage. A
Rapid act which all sides must applaud.
Captain Bedford Pim—that " simple sailor"—wanted