Punch (66.1874)

April 25, 1874.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

169

PUNCH’S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.


OCTOR PUNCH’S
young friends re-
sumed their duties,
on Monday, April
13, after the usual
Easter recess.

Major Beaumont
opened the work of
the School by ex-
hibiting his large
plan—quite as im-
posing as any Christ-
mas-piece ever dis-
played by Blue Coat
Boy to Lord Mayor
-—for substituting
for the Militia a
Reserve to he formed
by rapid filtration
of short-service men

through the ranks into an English Landwehr. This drew down a scattered fire of desultory
criticism on Lord Cardwell’s Army changes—the short-service system, recruiting, and com-
pulsory service—from such military experts as Colonel North, General Shete, Mr.
O’Reilly, Sir H. Wilmot, Major Dickson, and Sir G. Baleour, till Mr. Campbell
Bannerman, taking up the cudgels for Lord Cardwell, warned the House against pulling
up the shoots of the military crop sown by the late Government to look how they were growing,
and insisted on the homely wisdom of looking before leaping. Mr. Hardy backed Mr.
Bannerman. After all, recruiting is not so very bad. It would he premature to pronounce
the Service, as now settled, too short to he sweet to Hodge, or our Reserves past praying for.
Does not a British proverb say “Service is no inheritance”? Then what chance for
schemes implying that the least pleasant form of service—Military Service—is to be every-
body’s inheritance ? For this implication lies at the bottom of Major Beaumont’s proposition,
which may be most briefly disposed of as “ Prooshian.”

Of course, England expects every man to do his duty, but that doesn’t include
regimental duty.

So Major Beaumont withdrew his Motion, having ventilated the subject —■ “from
all the airts the wind can hlaw; ” for no two Members seemed to think alike on any one point
started.

Only one thing seems disagreeably clear—that the Army has been thoroughly As-organised.
Is it settling down again into a sounder and stronger order (as Cardwell & Co. maintain) or
drifting nearer and nearer to chaos (as the military experts, for the most part, assert) ?—•
that is the question about which John Bull has a right to feel anxious, and on which he
will extract little light from anything stated, or shown, in the Army discussions of the
Session thus far.

Tuesday. — In the Peers, the Lord Chancellor read to the House Sir Garnet
Wolseley’s thanks in due form for their Lordships’ resolution of thanks to himself and the
officers, and soldiers, sailors, and marines. No one can deny that Britannia has given
Sir Garnet and his brave companions in arms an ample allowance of praise. She has now
crowned the praise bestowed on all by a very good slice of solid pudding given to Sir
Garnet himself, in the shape of an allowance of £25,000. This is what the Queen recom-
mends and Parliament has cheerfully provided. Long may he live to enjoy it!

In the Commons. Good news for Art-lovers—the improvements in the National Gallery

are to be completed in a year, when all the
National Pictures will be lodged at the sign
of the Punch-bowl and Pepper-boxes, in-
stead of being distributed between that
house and the Brompton Boilers, as at pre-
sent. So at all events our Art Treasures
will now have one roof over their heads, if
not a very stately or ornamental one.

Sir Robert Montague asked a silly
question of Mr. Disraeli, and got no
answer.

Mr. Bass, moving to do away with the
last rag of Imprisonment for Debt,—still
hung out of the County Courts,—was de-
feated by 215 to 52.

Doctors differ as to the value of this
drastic remedy for the serious disease of
Small Debts, which is wide-spread among
our labouring classes—and their wives.
Probably the Scotch tallyman, or travelling
pedlar, is at once the largest disseminator
of the disease, and the most regular cus-
tomer of the County Court for the Prison-
physic so liberally dispensed there.

Mr. Lopes thinks credit a blessing to the
poor man, and this power of commitment
the condition of Credit. So thought Sir H.
James once, but last year’s Select Com-
mittee had converted him. It was the
physic of Commitment that kept alive the
disease of Credit.

And so the debate strayed off into the
question : Which is best for the Working-
man—that Credit should he kept alive by
Power of Imprisonment, or that Power of
Imprisonment should he done away with to
get rid of Credit ?

We have long ago settled the question for
Master, why should we he still discussing it
for Man ?

Unluckily Mr. Bass stopping short at £5
had to admit his Bill was illogical; so the
House, under CROSS-direction, threw it out.

The next time it appears Punch ventures
to prophesy that it will he without a £5
limit. It may then challenge a division
on its merits with a different result from
the present.

Wednesday.—Sir John Lubbock, who
has already attached his name for ever
to the Bank Holiday Act, was bowled
out in the attempt to throw the aegis
of the Law over such Celtic Remains as
have escaped pick and ploughshare. The
schedule of his Bill included dyke and fort,
dolmen and menhir, cairn and cromlech,
burial-mound and hut-circle, but said
nothing of later monuments.

The House cares a great deal about Rights
of Property, and very little about Celtic Re-
mains. It is not to be wondered at that Big
Ben was allowed to toll the death-knell of .the
Bill to the Tennysonian tune of “Proputty,
proputty,” in spite of Hope’s flattering tale,
and a formidable array, at the back of Sir
John and his Bill, of names divided in the
House, but making common cause in defence
of the Mysterious, Monumental, and Mega-
lithic. Sir E. Antrobus, the owner of
Stonehenge, declared that Archaeologists
were the most formidable enemies the Great
Stones had to fear; and vaunted his own
care as having saved them from destruction
at the hands of a band of enthusiastic exca-
vators, headed by Sir John Lubbock him-
self. Sir John’s plea for his Bill was
swept away by respect for “ proputty” and
fear of a heavy pull on the Treasury to-
gether ; and his Bill was kicked out, very
decidedly, by 147 to 94, but we hope to re-
vive in a more comprehensive form some day.

Then we became practical, and really
carried through Second Reading two .useful
Bills—Mr. Anderson’s, for extending to
Scotland Sir A. Cockburn’s Act for the
Suppression of Betting-Houses—mark, not