Punch (33.1857)

PUNCH'S ESSENCE

"Jl/TONDAY, June 22nd. Monday was a splendidly fine and particularly
hot day, a remark which equally applies to all the other days of the
week. Meteorological influences had their effect upon the senators as
upon everybody else, and the debates were exceedingly languid and
feeble ; but when the speakers did boil up into passions, they went at
it like men. The Ministers' Money Bill has finally passed the Lords,
the Earl of Derby not choosing to run another risk of being sent for
by the Queen, asked to make a Government, and having to confess
that he had nobody to make it with. However, the Conservatives
now expect to do better things, for they have bought the Morning
Herald, appointed Mr. Hamilton, member for Dublin University, its
editor, put the " Sword of Gideon" out of the way, and altogether
given promise of energy, and of as much rationality as can be looked
for in a party that contains Mr. Spooner.

It was not to be supposed that the Grievance to which Mr. Punch
adverted last week would not be remedied. The idea of a Jew being
admissible to high office while a Catholic is excluded, was found
so intolerable that, as the Jews' claims had been conceded, it was
agreed to throw open the offices in question to their Catholic brethren ?
Not exactly; but still the parties were reduced to a level, by the
introduction into the Oaths Bill of provisions taking away what had
been accorded to the Jew. One boy has sixpence, another nothing,
and a benevolent man desires to put them on the same footing—so he
takes away the first boy's sixpence. Even Newdegate could see that
this was absurd, and he remarked upon the wisdom of the Liberal
party that would permit a Jew to make a law, and forbid him to
administer it.

It was satisfactorily explained by Sir B. Hall, that the stone of Sir
Charles Barry's new Houses of Parliament is breaking to pieces, and
that the galvanised roof is rusting away. It will therefore be necessary
to have new houses and a new roof. The Commons, therefore, voted
£162,361, for Sir Charles to do what he liked with. Sir B. Hall
also explained, that the usual fatality of blunder had attended the clock
and bells business, and that the former had been put up before the
latter, which was " a mistake," but he hoped to hear the chimes next
session.

Tuesday. The Lords passed the Divorce Bill, by 46 to 25; the
majority, it is believed, having been considerably increased by a canting
professional protest with which Saponaceous Samuel of Oxford broke

OF PARLIAMENT.

out just before division, to the great discontent of their lordships. It
may be mentioned that the imprisonment provision was removed from
the Bill. Redesdale, Malmesbury, and Nelson (a nice trio), did their
best to cripple the measure, and the former has brought in an opposi-
tion Divorce Bill of his own. Lord Brougham says, that when the
measure passes there will be no such great rush for divorces; but
some of the peers and bishops evidently think that all the Browns,
Joneses, and Robinsons in the kingdom are respectively dying to be
rid of their lawful ribs, and that in about a year you will hardly meet
such a thing as a man with a wife.

Wiscount Williams and a majority in the Commons decided to
adjourn the Bill for providing a park for the Einsbury people, for
whose benefit Government had promised to ask the House for £50,000.
The Wiscount thinks that if the Einsbury folk want fresh air, they
had better order round their carriages and drive over to Battersea •
but we fear this haughty aristocrat does not understand the wants of
the humbler classes. Lord Raynham, as has before been noted, is
aiming at a honourable distinction by helping the oppressed, and he
has this week forced upon the attention of the Home Secretary
some cases of brutal assaults on women, has introduced a Bill against
cruelty to animals, and has brought up the barbarities of certain work-
houses, a select committee on which he lost by 21 only.

An India debate followed, but it is no subject for light treatment,
for while Members were droning about cotton, and Mangles was
paffing the Company as having done miracles for India, news was
hurrying over the sea that native regiments were in mutiny, had
seized Delhi, and murdered all the Europeans there, without distinction
of age or sex. It is a good time to be erecting a Shropshire memorial
to Clive, if only to remind England that she_ once had a man who
knew not only how to gain, but how to keep Oriental conquests.

Wednesday. A long Irish squabble on a law bill.

Thursday. Lord Campbell's bill against immoral publications was
read a second time, after a diverting speech against it from Lord
Lyndhurst, who contended that the police ought not to be empowered
to deal with the beasts of Holywell Street, because Corregio and
other great painters have demoralised Art in certain cases, and because
Wycherly, Congreve, Dryden, and all Erench novelists, have
occasionally written impurely. Nevertheless, as a lively old sentle-

Vol. 33.

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