DOI Heft:
March 1, 1856
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16617#0089
march l, 1856 ] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 81
PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
HE Peers met in the morning
{Monday, February 18), and
were apprised, by a letter
from Baron Wensleydale,
that he should certainly not
condescend to hire a barrister
to persuade the Lords to
sanction the act of their
conveyed to both Houses this evening, connect itself with a less serious
matter ihan the question, why our first Crimean army was martyred,
we could afford to be amused at the new investigation. As it is, we
will simply record that the officers, whose ignorance and blundering
have been exposed by the Report of the Crimean Commissioners, have
had sufficient influence in high quarters to procure the appointment of
a board, of their own class, which is to re-investigate the statements in
that report. The public may be tolerably certain as to what the result
will be; but, to ensure the impossibility of this board of general officers
going right, even by accident, no man is to be a member who can know
, anything of the real case—" the having served in the Crimea is to
Queen. They then resolved J exclude." And the Board is to sit with closed doors. And by this
themselves into a Committee j magic Bottom expects to get his Ass's head taken off, or "translated "
of Privileges, in order to sit\ into a likeness of Achilles. Poor Bottom !
in judgment on the Sove- j Lord Derby then professed great desire to obtain from Government
reign for the exercise of her; an explanation of the respective positions and powers of the Com-
prerogative, but after about j mandrr-in-Chiee, and of the Minister of War. To the Earl everything
an hour's squabble as to the . seemed in a muddle. Lord Panmure denied the muddle, and gave an
best way to begin, they ad- j explanation slightly more perplexing than Lord Derby's previous
journed _ until Friday. They i impressions. He declared, however, that the Commander-in-Chief,
met again, as a House, in the J and the Army, were responsible to the House of Commons, which paiit
evening, and remarks were | them. This hint may be useful at no distant date. Then the poor,
made upon the conduct of the | dear, old, gallant, helpless, pliant, courtly, mischievous Commander-
Goyernment in shirking the' in-Chiee—to whom all glory and honour for everything he did in
production of the Kars papers. The evident impropriety of this course ; Spain, Erance, and India-, and all censure and castigation for almost
may be judged from the fact that even Hardwicke and Malmesbury everything he does, and does not do, at the Horse Guards and in the
comprehended that it was wrong, and contrived to say so with no ! Palace—tried to justify what had been done for Bottom—a melancholy
particular clumsiness. _ I exhibition. Long may Lord Hardinge enjoy his well-earned £5000
The Commons enjoyed an Irish debate on the Bill for abolishing the a-year, and his fifty crosses, and clasps, and orders, but Mr. Punch
-Encumbered Estates Court and transferring its duties to a reformed , hereby offers him a second £5000 a-year, (which will be cheerfully
Court of Chancery. The discussion was chiefly left to the lawyers, j contributed by a fraction of our readers, at sixpence a-head) if he will
each of whom completely refuted everybody else, and then the Bdl was only solicit one order more—an order to walk into private life. Never
read a second time. Mr. Whiteside, with his usual amiability, had a chivalrous man, like Hardinge, such a chance of serving—
imputed jobbery to the authors of the measure, but the Irish Solicitor- perhaps saving—his country.
General, Mr. J. Fitzgerald, rose in arrurns and rebuked him in " ln the Commons, the question of the Sunday opening of the British
sarcastic terrums. | Museum and the National Gallery came on. Shoals of petitions, got
Tuesday. The Lords passed the Bill creating a Minister of Education, j up by the clergy _ of all denominations, and signed by their followers,
with a recognition of Sir John Pakington's exertions in connection had been pouring in against the proposition, and the mere list of those
with the subject; a compliment, which happens to be well deserved. I which were flung: in as a last volley occupies nearly three closely-printed
The Minister of War mentioned that Fort St. Nicholas had been blown j columns of the Times Newspaper. Against this demonstration let Lord
up by the French, and that he had no doubt Sir Edmund Lyons i Stanley's well-put test be noted. Here was a question which a
would, if possible, blow up the ships at the bottom of Sebastopol i certain portion of the nation regarded as involving immortal interests,
harbour. Meantime he himself blew up Lord Hardwicke for shaping ; About 150,000 signatures are estimated to have been obtained, by theo
his inquiry on the subject in an incorrect manner.
In the Commons, Sir Charles Napier fixed the Ith of March for
the Bombardment of Fort Graham. Mr. Mackinnon procured the
logical influences, to the hostile petitions. When the church-rate agita/
tion was astir, 600,000 signatures came in upon petitions against a mere
tax. The debate to-night was brief, and chiefly left to men of small
appointment of a Committee to consider whether some tribunal, calibre. The principal exceptions were Lord Stanley, who manfully
analogous to the French Gonseils des PruaVhommes, could not be created, stood out as an Anti-Sabbatarian ; Mr. Napier, who saw " poison " in
in order to interpose between workmen and employers in case of dis-
putes. Sir George Grey, true to his Whig instinct, treated the
proposal as one which would produce no good; but he would not take the
seeing pictures on Sunday; Mr. Heywood, who denied the truth of
the Jewish history of the Creation, but described the Sabbath as a
divine ordinance, to be kept as a day of rejoicing; and Lord
trouble of opposing it. Mr. Locke King then moved that there | Palmerston, who thought there would be no harm in opening these
should be a New Edition of the Statutes. By leaving out all the 1 exhibitions, but that there would be much if the House acted in defiance
trash, and obsolete and repealed matter, he showed that the existing of the opinions which had been expressed against doing so- This
Statute Law might be reduced, from a bulk of forty quarto volumes, eminently House-of-Commons logic and morality was too suited to the
into a nice edition for the waistcoat pocket,—"say, ten moderate-; audience not to be successful. On division, 376—add four who were
sized volumes." The object is most desirable; but Mr. King's plan, "shut out," and say 380—gentlemen in comfortable circumstances, most
which was to desire the Clerk of the Parliaments (who has already a of them with carriages and country houses, decided, against 48
great deal to do, and half of whom, moreover, belongs to the Lords, opponents, that the only holiday Mammon has left to the poor man
and would not be ordered about by the Commons) to codify the British shall not be better spent than in a squalid house, a dirty drinking-yard,
Laws, by way of filling up his evenings, was considered a little cool, or a debauching public-house.
and the motion was rejected by 161 to 63. After some Irish squabbling, Friday The Lords finally resumed the Wensleydale question,
interesting chiefly to theparites concerned, the Adulterations of lood Affer reiectm„. ))y 142 to 111, Lord Glenelg's sensible proposal that
Committee was appointed. With two or three exceptions, its members )he opimon of tae Judges should be taken, they went once more into
io not seem a, very sapient lot; but Mr. Punch will assist them with Committee and aft er3 a debate, evincing research and eloquence
tus advice and correction. "worthy of a better cause," the Coronet pronounced the Crown to
Wednesday. The Commons sat for an hour ; and a BUI for Regis- have acted unconstitutionally. The numbers were 92 to 57—no proxies
'ering our Doctors was referred to a Committee. Lord Robert s being used in Committees. Nov to see whether the Ministers have
Grosvenos. burst out with a puff for the Homoeopathists, in whom he | moral courage enough to stand by their Sovereign, or whether they
is a believer ; as might be inferred from his advocacy, last year, of a1 will leave her in a false position.
quack specific for the treatment, of Sunday. Mr. Henley, who often j jn the Commons, Me. Vernon Smith intimated that "large
grumbles out a fair hit, said that he had no sympathy with homoeo- powers " had been given to Lord Dalhousie to do what he liked with
pathy, unless upon the principle that the less you took of a bad thing , the territories of the King oe Oude. The Chancellor of the
1 he better. Mr, Wilson, the Cabinet's Great Calculating Boy, was j Exchequer went in for Ways and Means. He mentioned that he
milled up for a special blunder, ln the matter of an Act, under which I must have money, that twenty-two months of war had cost forty-three
£3,000,000 had already been advanced, he had told the House that mjHions and a half, which would not have been spent in peace-time,
the rate of interest was five per cent, only, whereas it was six-and-a- j an(j ne obtained the sanction of the House to his loan of £5,000,000,
half. Our youthful readers are invited to do the sum both ways, to! and his turning a great heap of Exchequer bills into National Debt,
show to what amount Mr. Wilson's blunder would extend, taking j An Ordnance vote of a million and a quarter was also taken. And
three years as the time during which the money has been lent, to copy j another circumstance of the evening was worth note. In the year
out the calculations very neatly, and to enclose them to the Economist
Office, with their compliments 10 the Editor. The documents will be
sure to reach Mr. Wilson, and may improve his mind.
Thursday. There is a kind of effrontery at which decent people
scarcely know whether to laugh or to be indignant. Hid the intimation,
1262 the Londoners arose, and killed seven hundred Jews, because one
Jew had taken two shdlings a-week interest on a pound. In 1274
Parliament enacted that every Jew lending money should wear a plate
on his breast, signifying that he was an usurer. On Friday morning, h
knot of Jews offered, for the above, loan, terms so "advantageous
PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
HE Peers met in the morning
{Monday, February 18), and
were apprised, by a letter
from Baron Wensleydale,
that he should certainly not
condescend to hire a barrister
to persuade the Lords to
sanction the act of their
conveyed to both Houses this evening, connect itself with a less serious
matter ihan the question, why our first Crimean army was martyred,
we could afford to be amused at the new investigation. As it is, we
will simply record that the officers, whose ignorance and blundering
have been exposed by the Report of the Crimean Commissioners, have
had sufficient influence in high quarters to procure the appointment of
a board, of their own class, which is to re-investigate the statements in
that report. The public may be tolerably certain as to what the result
will be; but, to ensure the impossibility of this board of general officers
going right, even by accident, no man is to be a member who can know
, anything of the real case—" the having served in the Crimea is to
Queen. They then resolved J exclude." And the Board is to sit with closed doors. And by this
themselves into a Committee j magic Bottom expects to get his Ass's head taken off, or "translated "
of Privileges, in order to sit\ into a likeness of Achilles. Poor Bottom !
in judgment on the Sove- j Lord Derby then professed great desire to obtain from Government
reign for the exercise of her; an explanation of the respective positions and powers of the Com-
prerogative, but after about j mandrr-in-Chiee, and of the Minister of War. To the Earl everything
an hour's squabble as to the . seemed in a muddle. Lord Panmure denied the muddle, and gave an
best way to begin, they ad- j explanation slightly more perplexing than Lord Derby's previous
journed _ until Friday. They i impressions. He declared, however, that the Commander-in-Chief,
met again, as a House, in the J and the Army, were responsible to the House of Commons, which paiit
evening, and remarks were | them. This hint may be useful at no distant date. Then the poor,
made upon the conduct of the | dear, old, gallant, helpless, pliant, courtly, mischievous Commander-
Goyernment in shirking the' in-Chiee—to whom all glory and honour for everything he did in
production of the Kars papers. The evident impropriety of this course ; Spain, Erance, and India-, and all censure and castigation for almost
may be judged from the fact that even Hardwicke and Malmesbury everything he does, and does not do, at the Horse Guards and in the
comprehended that it was wrong, and contrived to say so with no ! Palace—tried to justify what had been done for Bottom—a melancholy
particular clumsiness. _ I exhibition. Long may Lord Hardinge enjoy his well-earned £5000
The Commons enjoyed an Irish debate on the Bill for abolishing the a-year, and his fifty crosses, and clasps, and orders, but Mr. Punch
-Encumbered Estates Court and transferring its duties to a reformed , hereby offers him a second £5000 a-year, (which will be cheerfully
Court of Chancery. The discussion was chiefly left to the lawyers, j contributed by a fraction of our readers, at sixpence a-head) if he will
each of whom completely refuted everybody else, and then the Bdl was only solicit one order more—an order to walk into private life. Never
read a second time. Mr. Whiteside, with his usual amiability, had a chivalrous man, like Hardinge, such a chance of serving—
imputed jobbery to the authors of the measure, but the Irish Solicitor- perhaps saving—his country.
General, Mr. J. Fitzgerald, rose in arrurns and rebuked him in " ln the Commons, the question of the Sunday opening of the British
sarcastic terrums. | Museum and the National Gallery came on. Shoals of petitions, got
Tuesday. The Lords passed the Bill creating a Minister of Education, j up by the clergy _ of all denominations, and signed by their followers,
with a recognition of Sir John Pakington's exertions in connection had been pouring in against the proposition, and the mere list of those
with the subject; a compliment, which happens to be well deserved. I which were flung: in as a last volley occupies nearly three closely-printed
The Minister of War mentioned that Fort St. Nicholas had been blown j columns of the Times Newspaper. Against this demonstration let Lord
up by the French, and that he had no doubt Sir Edmund Lyons i Stanley's well-put test be noted. Here was a question which a
would, if possible, blow up the ships at the bottom of Sebastopol i certain portion of the nation regarded as involving immortal interests,
harbour. Meantime he himself blew up Lord Hardwicke for shaping ; About 150,000 signatures are estimated to have been obtained, by theo
his inquiry on the subject in an incorrect manner.
In the Commons, Sir Charles Napier fixed the Ith of March for
the Bombardment of Fort Graham. Mr. Mackinnon procured the
logical influences, to the hostile petitions. When the church-rate agita/
tion was astir, 600,000 signatures came in upon petitions against a mere
tax. The debate to-night was brief, and chiefly left to men of small
appointment of a Committee to consider whether some tribunal, calibre. The principal exceptions were Lord Stanley, who manfully
analogous to the French Gonseils des PruaVhommes, could not be created, stood out as an Anti-Sabbatarian ; Mr. Napier, who saw " poison " in
in order to interpose between workmen and employers in case of dis-
putes. Sir George Grey, true to his Whig instinct, treated the
proposal as one which would produce no good; but he would not take the
seeing pictures on Sunday; Mr. Heywood, who denied the truth of
the Jewish history of the Creation, but described the Sabbath as a
divine ordinance, to be kept as a day of rejoicing; and Lord
trouble of opposing it. Mr. Locke King then moved that there | Palmerston, who thought there would be no harm in opening these
should be a New Edition of the Statutes. By leaving out all the 1 exhibitions, but that there would be much if the House acted in defiance
trash, and obsolete and repealed matter, he showed that the existing of the opinions which had been expressed against doing so- This
Statute Law might be reduced, from a bulk of forty quarto volumes, eminently House-of-Commons logic and morality was too suited to the
into a nice edition for the waistcoat pocket,—"say, ten moderate-; audience not to be successful. On division, 376—add four who were
sized volumes." The object is most desirable; but Mr. King's plan, "shut out," and say 380—gentlemen in comfortable circumstances, most
which was to desire the Clerk of the Parliaments (who has already a of them with carriages and country houses, decided, against 48
great deal to do, and half of whom, moreover, belongs to the Lords, opponents, that the only holiday Mammon has left to the poor man
and would not be ordered about by the Commons) to codify the British shall not be better spent than in a squalid house, a dirty drinking-yard,
Laws, by way of filling up his evenings, was considered a little cool, or a debauching public-house.
and the motion was rejected by 161 to 63. After some Irish squabbling, Friday The Lords finally resumed the Wensleydale question,
interesting chiefly to theparites concerned, the Adulterations of lood Affer reiectm„. ))y 142 to 111, Lord Glenelg's sensible proposal that
Committee was appointed. With two or three exceptions, its members )he opimon of tae Judges should be taken, they went once more into
io not seem a, very sapient lot; but Mr. Punch will assist them with Committee and aft er3 a debate, evincing research and eloquence
tus advice and correction. "worthy of a better cause," the Coronet pronounced the Crown to
Wednesday. The Commons sat for an hour ; and a BUI for Regis- have acted unconstitutionally. The numbers were 92 to 57—no proxies
'ering our Doctors was referred to a Committee. Lord Robert s being used in Committees. Nov to see whether the Ministers have
Grosvenos. burst out with a puff for the Homoeopathists, in whom he | moral courage enough to stand by their Sovereign, or whether they
is a believer ; as might be inferred from his advocacy, last year, of a1 will leave her in a false position.
quack specific for the treatment, of Sunday. Mr. Henley, who often j jn the Commons, Me. Vernon Smith intimated that "large
grumbles out a fair hit, said that he had no sympathy with homoeo- powers " had been given to Lord Dalhousie to do what he liked with
pathy, unless upon the principle that the less you took of a bad thing , the territories of the King oe Oude. The Chancellor of the
1 he better. Mr, Wilson, the Cabinet's Great Calculating Boy, was j Exchequer went in for Ways and Means. He mentioned that he
milled up for a special blunder, ln the matter of an Act, under which I must have money, that twenty-two months of war had cost forty-three
£3,000,000 had already been advanced, he had told the House that mjHions and a half, which would not have been spent in peace-time,
the rate of interest was five per cent, only, whereas it was six-and-a- j an(j ne obtained the sanction of the House to his loan of £5,000,000,
half. Our youthful readers are invited to do the sum both ways, to! and his turning a great heap of Exchequer bills into National Debt,
show to what amount Mr. Wilson's blunder would extend, taking j An Ordnance vote of a million and a quarter was also taken. And
three years as the time during which the money has been lent, to copy j another circumstance of the evening was worth note. In the year
out the calculations very neatly, and to enclose them to the Economist
Office, with their compliments 10 the Editor. The documents will be
sure to reach Mr. Wilson, and may improve his mind.
Thursday. There is a kind of effrontery at which decent people
scarcely know whether to laugh or to be indignant. Hid the intimation,
1262 the Londoners arose, and killed seven hundred Jews, because one
Jew had taken two shdlings a-week interest on a pound. In 1274
Parliament enacted that every Jew lending money should wear a plate
on his breast, signifying that he was an usurer. On Friday morning, h
knot of Jews offered, for the above, loan, terms so "advantageous