Punch (52.1867)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

265

June 29, 1867.]

PUNCH’S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Question in the Lords, on Monday, June 17th, whether the
County Courts should retain the power of imprisonment for debt.
Contended that while this is being abolished _ in the case of the
wealthier classes, it should not be continued in regard to the poor.
Answered, first, that the poor are not imprisoned for debt, but for con-
tumacy in not paying up instalments ; secondly, that it is _ better to
lock a man up than to take away his wife’s furniture ; and, thirdly, that
without such power, there would be no real remedy, and therefore
that no credit would be given to the poor. Lord Cairns thought it
would be a very good thing if there were no credit. The power is to be
continued.

There is to be no Irish Reform Bill this Session. The circumstances
of the times, said Mr. Disraeli, are extremely unpropitious. Foreign
agency is acting upon Irish morbid sentiment, and it is not a season to
deal with the distribution of electoral rights.

There is to be no Theatrical Reform Bill this Session. Perhaps Mr.
Hardy will parody Mr. Disraeli, and say that the theatrical circum-
stances of the times are extremely unpropitious. Poreign dramas are
acting, and illustrating morbid sentiment, and the vulgarities of the
Music Halls extinguish the taste for intellectual Representation.

To-day there was menace, met by menace. Mr. Laing had a motion,
and Mr. Disraeli intimated that if it were carried Government would
reconsider their position in regard to Reform. You shall learn the
result.

Mr. Laing moved, as an Amendment to the Government scheme of
Redistribution, that an additional Member should be given to each of
Six large towns, videlicet:—

Grimy Bristol.

Riotous Birmingham.

Stuck-up Liverpool.

Smoky Leeds.

Muddy Manchester.

Savage Sheffield.

A good debate ensued. Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone warmly
supported the Amendment. Lord Craneorne said that a man was
proscribed if he dared to say that any portion of the Working Class was
tainted with the vices of the middle and upper classes, but still he
must urge that we were enfranchising many who would be corrupt.
On division, the menace was found to have told. Mr. Laing was
defeated by 247 to 239—Government majority, 8.

We then threw Chelsea, Kensington, Hammersmith, and Pulham
into one, christened the new borough Chelsea, and gave it two Members.
Mr. Punch proposes two resident gentlemen as the first representatives,
Mr. Thomas Carlyle, of Chelsea, and Mr. Percival Leigh, of
Hammersmith.

Quarrel between Mr. H. Baillie and Mr. Craweord. The latter
denied the existence of corrupt long-shore men, and exposed himself to
the jolly mercilessness of a sketch, in Mr. Locke’s best manner, of the
real character of those nuisances.

Mr. Disraeli gave Merthyr-Tydvil its new Member, and Mr.
Cheetham, Liberal, the present Member, made a very polite speech of
thanks, and Hackney was created.

After a long struggle for the report of progress, Mr. Hope declaring
that the House was demoralised, we got to Clause 15, which, as it ori-
ginally stood, simply gave a Member to the University of London.
Por some reason, Mr. Disraeli proposed to link London with
Durham, and give two Members.

This proposition Mr. Punch had condemned, and therefore it is
needless for him to say that, after a great deal of wrangling (which he
pardons) the House recognised its duty, and rejected the plan. The
match between the dashing and accomplished London gentleman and
the north country parson’s little maid-servant, Dolly Durham, with
her prayer-book wrapped up in her folded pocket-handkerchief, would
have been too ridiculous. Mr. Disraeli made no real fight, and on

Tuesday, after a strong speech from Mr. Lowe against Durham, a
becoming compliment to the Dean of Durham by Mr. Bright, and
an apt Latin quotation by Mr. Osborne, the Committee gave Govern-
ment a majority of 1 for the word “universities,” and then defeated it
on the words “ and. Durham” by a majority of 8, so in dealing with
educational establishments we have enacted bad grammar.

Abandoning the Reform Bill for the time, we applied ourselves to
Mr. FawcetPs motion for throwing open the government of Trinity
College, Dublin, to the Catholics. This college, he said, was the
richest in the world—it had £92,000 a year, and estates in seventeen
Irish counties but its benefits were appropriated to a religious
minority. Debate adjourned.

Wednesday. Lord Amberley moved the Second Reading of a Bill
permitting the delivery of Sunday Lectures to hear which money
might be paid at the doors. He went boldly into the question, and.
declared that there was no Sabbath. There never had been any but
the Seventh Day, though there was a theory that, at some time and in

some manner, both unknown, the obligations of the Jewish Sabbath
had been transferred to the first day of the week. Lord Amberley
does not yet understand the House of Commons, or the nation. All in
good time.

Mr. Kinnaird opposed, and said that if such lectures as Lord
Amberley meant, which were either theatrical performances or musical
entertainments by singers in evening dress (evening dress is very
dreadful) were to be allowed, regular theatrical performances could
not be justly prohibited. Mr. Mill thought that such lectures would
keep people from the public-house, and asked which was_ nearest to
religion, science or sensuality. Mr. Henley was for keeping Sunday
strictly as a day of rest. One concession to money-making would lead
to another.

Mr. Bright spoke like a religious man and a gentleman. He
unhesitatingly avowed his conviction of the inestimable value of the
Day of Rest, quoted George Herbert’s exquisite poem on Sunday
(the poet and the poem appear to have been unknown to sundry and
divers), but urged that the class that has but one day for recreation
and instruction ought to have its condition closely examined, when the
question was stirred. He did not approve of the Bill as it stood, but
wished it sent to a Committee. The subject was a very difficult one.
He believed that the stability and character of the country as well as
the advancement of our race depended very much on the mode in which
the Day of Rest appointed for mankind might be observed and used
among men. He concluded amid unanimous and well-deserved cheers.

The Bill was rejected without a division. Mr. Punch is not often
fortunate enough entirely to coincide with Mr. Bright, and has
therefore the more pleasure in saying that Mr. Bright’s was the only
speech, in this interesting debate, which Mr. Punch would have been
content to deliver, verbatim et literatim, had he wished to express his
sentiments.

Thursday. A very good spar in the Lords, on the Ritual Commission.
Lord Shaftesbury thought that the Bishop of Oxford ought not
to have been on it, any more than himself, the Bishop, he said, being a
decided favourer of the extreme Ritualists. Lord Derby charged
Lord Shaftesbury with wishing for a one-sided report, condemnatory
of Ritualism. Lord Shaftesbury was indignant at being charged
with such baseness, which he disavowed. The Bishop of Oxford
denied that he was a man of extreme opinions, and said that he was in
the middle of the Church, and stood by Richard Hooker, and more-
over had repressed Ritualism in his diocese. The Primate thought
the Commission a fair one. He is Chairman.

Lord Russell discussed Luxemburg, and handsomely applauded
Lord Stanley. The paternal Earl was naturally gratified, and said
so. The conversation passing to Crete, Lord Derby said that the
Cretans were as great liars now as two thousand years ago, and he did
not believe the accounts of Turkish atrocities. England had refused
to join in the “ identic ” note to the Sultan.

In the Commons, after Mr. Bright’s unqualified denunciation of
the uncomfortable place itself (Mr. D. Griffith and Sir H. Edwards
had a row about seat-keeping), we addressed ourselves to Reform, and
beat the Government by 272 to 234, majority 38, on the proposal to let
Yotes be taken by Yoting-Papers. The debate was long, but really
Mr. Punch cannot analyse what was said for and against such a scheme.
It might have been described as an Act authorising Election Agents to
issue Bribery Scrip.

Mr. Whalley backs a foul-mouthed Irish hireling called Murphy,
whose gross insults to Catholicism aroused the lower Papisis of Bir-
mingham to riot, in which roughs and thieves joined, the town was
thrown into terror, families have been ruined, and brutal violence has
been perpetrated. Murphy ought to be whipped at the cart’s-tail, and
Whalley expelled the House of Commons.

Friday. On the Episcopate Bill, the Bishop of Oxford, successfully
opposing a clause of Lord Grey’s for denying territorial titles to the
new prelates, said that from the beginning of Christianity a Bishop had
always had a territorial title, and that you might as well attempt to
make a husband without giving him a wife, as create a Bishop without
such a title, which was “the gem of his mitre.” Some juvenile Lords,
fresh from Juvenal, probably thought, if they did not say, that a
Suffragan non Sufferre queat majoris pondera gemmce.

Considerable strife in the Commons touching the Boundaries Com-
missioners. Mr. Bright objects that none are Radicals, but all Terri-
torials. Those proposed are Lord Eversley (late Speaker), Lord
Penrhyn, Sir John Duckworth, Mr. Walter {Times), Mr. Bram-
ston, Mr. Russell Gurney (Recorder), and Mr. Bouverie. Mr.
Bright was asked whether he wanted to insert Reform League-men,
or Penian petitioners, or Beales ? Some further progress was made
with the Clauses, but as Mr. Mill says, we are a precious good way
off the end.

Bit from Birmingham.— Worse than the Potato Disease: the
“ Murphy ” pest.

“ Cook’s” Excursionist.—Her policeman on a trip.