Punch (47.1864)

251

December 17 1864.) PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

CABINET COUNCIL ON REFORM.

Scene, Downing Street. Present, The Cabinet.

Lori Granville. Ha! Ha ! Very good, indeed. But you know they
always said that of her. Ha! Ha! Order! Order! Low, shall we
go to business ? I think we decided that we should consider the Betorm
question to-day, and nothing else.

Lord Palmerston. Suppose we don’t call it a question, yet, Gran-
ville. It has hardly assumed a concrete form. Quieta non movere, as
old Sir Robert Walpole used to say.

Mr. Milner Gibson. But I deny your quieta. There are a great lot ot
meetings, more or less influential, and we rnust do something.

Lori Russell. I cannot think why the matter is to be taken out of my
hands. I shall do nothing prematurely; but at the proper time, and in
the proper place, I shall be prepared with the proper Bill.

Mr. Gladstone. I cannot withhold my admiration from the triple con-
dition in which your Lordship has crystallised the proposition, Put if I
understand't to imply that the rest of the Cabinet is to be only a bed
of justice- .

Lord Palmerston. I’m blessed if it’s a bed oi roses. Do you
remember Lord Melbourne’s first inquiry, when people told him of a
difficulty ? “ Can’t you let it alone ? ”

Mr. Milner Gibson. We can’t let this alone.

Lord Palmerston. My dear Gibson, no man knows his power of
abstinence until he has tried it. Ask Mr. Banting.

Sir George Greg. The matter is not in my department, but-

Lord Palmerston. Then, Grey, rest and be thankful. Haven’t yon
enough to do ?

Sir G. G. Yes, and I don’t want more, which the Home Secretary
will have, if you allow agitation to excite people to demand what you
intend to deny.

Lori Palm. Very neat, but not to the pnipose. Who’s a-deniging
anything, Mrs. Gamp? But it’s one thing to say that yon will
listen to a person’s claim, when properly urged, and another to run
out into the street without your hat to meet him, and give him what
he asks.

Mr. Gladstone. The ancient Sibyl, repulsed, increased her demand.

Lord-Palm. Old women are deuced impudent.

Duke of Somerset. I say to-day, as I said last week, and mean to say
again next week, that I protest against any new subject being taken
up until we have decided whether there is to be any reduction of the
Naval Estimates, and what? I will not be hurried, or compelled to
arrange changes at short notice.

Dari de Grey and Ripon. I have no right or desire to imitate the
peremptory tone of the Duke, but I could wish to have an early idea
of what is to be done with the Army Estimates.

Lord Palm. Both of you ask Gladstone to tell you, as the com-
mercial traveller said in one of Punch’s pictures, what is the least sum
he can give the waiters without being considered mean ?

Mr. Gladstone. I need hardly say, that such questions are not to be
treated with levity or answered in haste; but if it will be any guide to
the noble Duke and the noble Lord, I may say that any budget which
does not include a certain reduction in the Estimates connected with
the department of the former, and a still larger decrease in the calcula-
tion of expenditure in the department of the latter, will not be a
budget which I should have any envy to introduce to the Legislature,
or any great hope of advocating with success.

Lord Palm. There, now you know all about it.

Duke of Somerset. I say that I know nothing.

Lord de Grey and Ripon. And I must represent that I am entirely
without practical information.

Lord Granville. Really this is a complete departure from our arrange-
ment, which was that we should discuss the question whether any notice
of the Reform agitation should be taken.

Lord Russell. I thought that I had settled that. Leave it to me.

Lord Palm. I see no objections.

Mr. Milner Gibson. But I see a great many. Nobody in the world
has more admiration for Lord Russell’s character, public and private,
than I have, and it I hau him on board my yacht, he should steer it if
he liked. {Laughter.) Well, I would forgive him, even if he ran us
ashore. But he will allow me to say that he has not been so successful
in the manufacture of Reform Bills as to justify the Liberal party in
handing over the whole business to his charge.

Duke of Somerset. Whom do you call Liberal; or, rather, am not I a
Liberal P

Lord Russell. And IP

Lord Stanley of Alderley. I hate rudeness, as everybody knows; but

I don’t know what the-what in the world the right honourable

gentleman means by his inuendo.

Lord Palm. There, there, what nonsense. We are all Liberals,
pur sang. Liberals to the marrow, as the Spanish say. Who doubts
l.hat p Didn’t we turn out the Conservatives, and how could we have
done that if we had not been Liberals ? {Great laughter.)

Lord Granville. If I could only induce you to settle one thing at a

time. The Premier is for doing nothing, the Foreign Secretary is for
doing the thing all by himself, the Army and Navy are for being
attended to first, and the Board of Trade is for an immediate promise
of a larger Reform Bill. Now, do let us discuss these points seriatim.
Who is for doing nothing ?

Lord Palm. My dear Granville, you, of course unintentionally,
rather misrepresent me, or at least fail quite to convey my meaning. I
strongly advise that before we take up this question, we should be quite
sure that it is necessary to do so, and that we don’t mistake a few
meetings of nobodies, which can always be got up at the shortest notice,
for the voice of the country.

Lord Russell. I shall not be misunderstood, I trust, when I say that
my noble friend may not contemplate remaining in office so long as
some other persons may feel it their duty to do, and that this. circum-
stance may induce him, unconsciously, to disregard the necessity for—
for placing ourselves in an advantageous position in the eyes of the
nation.

Mr. Gladstone. Entirely, but respectfully, repudiating any participa-
tion in the imputation that a certain interested motive exists in the
bosom of the Noble Lord at the head of the Government, I would also
say that I think the caution of the noble lord the Minister for Foreign
Affairs is somewhat in excess of necessity, as in my very humble judg-
ment the people of this country may, in an hour of crisis, look elsewhere
for leadership than in the direction anticipated by himself.

Lord Clarendon. Perhaps so.

The Lord Chancellor. If I have hitherto refrained from mingling in
this discussion, it has not been because I did not feel its importance,
but from my conviction that it was being conducted in a way which
rendered seriousness superfluous. Now that it appears to take a
rational form, I have no objection to say that if we are to stand as a
Liberal Government (it is needless for me to add, that I do not in the
least care whether we do or do not) we must issue a Reform scheme,
but it must be a sound and complete one. I will draw one up, and you
can give your formal assent to it at our next meeting. Excuse my
going, as I have engagements of importance. [Exit.

Lord Palm. I like Westbury, do you know ?

Mr. Milner Gibson. Of course we know it. {Laughing.) But he is
right about the necessity of a bill.

Lord Palm. I don’t see the necessity, but anyhow, let us see his bill.
Suppose we meet again in a fortnight.

Several Voices. Sooner, sooner.

Tjord Palm. Yery well. Settle it with Granville. Bat we under-
stand—mind—nobody is pledged to anything.

Lord Granville. If we were, how could we exist as a Cabinet ?

Lord Palm. That’s true. We are charmingly independent, yet
affectionately united. Human perfectibility, as we used to say about
sixty years ago. But, I repeat, quieta non movere. [Exit, whistling.

Mr. Milner Gibson. The wind will rise without a whistle. [Exit.

{The Council broke up.)

CLERGYMEN MADE SCARCE.

It used to be a saying, “ Make the greatest fool in the family a
parson.” That saying still holds good, with a condition. Make the
greatest fool in the family a parson, if he will let you. For he will not
let you unless he is such a fool as the greatest fool in a very foolish
family. That is, if you have not got a good fat living for him to step
into as soon as he is ordained.

It is a bore to be obliged to wear a white “ choker ” when you prefer
a black tie or bird’s-eye “ fogle.” So it is to he obliged to refrain from
going about smoking a short pipe if you wish to do so. It is a mon-
strous bore . to have your personal habits controlled and your natural
freedom limited in any degree by the opinion of old women, or the
power of old womanly bishops. No consideration but a very high
pecuniary one would induce a man who has the least respect for himself
to submit to any such dictation.

Fancy yourself being in such a position as to be liable to the censure
of a set of snobs constituting a coroner’s jury, because you, a curate,
choose to study anatomy !

Then fancy your Rector, who ought to stand by you, and back you
against those vulgar and impertinent blockheads, truckling to them
and to their kind, and giving you the sack, to starve, or get your living
how you can—that is, by begging or stealing, unless you possess a patri-
mony ; for once a parson always a parson; and having once entered
j the clerical profession, no other is open to you; neither can you keep a
shop or a public-house.

But no. This last case is not to be fancied. No clergyman can be
capable of the conduct supposed in it. The rumour that the Rector of
St. Botolph’s, Aldgate, has, under circumstances such as those above
stated, discharged his Curate, the Rev. Mr. Hunt, is evidently an
invention of the Jesuits, designed to damage the Church of England.

Who’s Gumming ?—Christmas.