Punch (66.1874)

May 9, 1874.]

PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVaKJL

193

And then, we came to “ the toast of the evening.” Mr. Cross
roposed the health of his friend, Mr. Bung, and the Public. He
egan hy sketching his friend’s career, gave some lively statistics of
| the growth in drink, and the improvement in drinking-places.

Bung was a benefactor of his species. It was not public-houses
: that encouraged drinking—(true, but sub-modo Mr. Cross)—but
higher wages and more Saint-Mondays. More inviting homes,

' and better education—these are the true checks on tippling. (True,
0 Mr. Cross ! hut please let us have as few publics, and as well
managed, as may be; and do what you can to secure that honest
liquor shall he sold in them. We are all against “robbing a poor
man of his beer,” but would rather he were robbed of, than by, the
drugged decoction of grains of Paradise, Cocculus indicus, and salt
and water, which too often usurps the honoured name of malt-and-
hop-juice.) So Mr. Cross proposes to abolish exempted houses, and
to fix certain closing hours for all—12‘30 a.m. for London, 11'30p.m.
for towns of over 10,000 inhabitants, and 11 p.m. for the rest of the
country. Night-houses will be under these rules. Beer-houses will
remain as they are. Any eccentric publican with a taste for being
i healthy, wealthy, and wise, may take out an early-closing licence,

! and shut up and go to bed an hour before his neighbours. (We
don’t envy that early pearl his life among his neighbouring night-
owls.) Then Mr. Cross clips the Magistrate’s claws. He is not to
be bound to endorse the licence on a first conviction, nor to put the
house under Bobby. And muzzles our friend Robertulus. The
i Police powers of entry under the present Act are suspended, and the
Force may only enter to keep order. The Adulteration Clauses are
repealed, and Publicans will be left to the ordinary law on the
subject. Mr. Cross wound up by professing his desire to supply
the real wants of his friends the Public, and to induce respectable
persons to follow the calling of his friend—he hoped he might be
allowed to call him his valued and valuable friend Bung.

When Mr. Cross gracefully subsided, there rose a buzz of contra-
dictory comment. Messrs. Melly and Pease wouldn’t give Bung
even half-an-hour’s law. Mr. Rathbone and Sir H. Johnstone
regarded the Bill as a step in the wrong direction. Sir W. John-
stone didn’t see why the house of Beer should be worse treated
than the house of Gin ; and Mr. Taebot and Mr. Gold key, gene-
rally approving, were for closing at ten in towns under 2000.

Sir W. Lawson gave the House a bit of his teetotal mind—hot.
So Conservative reaction means half-an-hour’s more boozing!
What Mr. Punch thinks Bung will think, and, indeed, what he
thinks himself, will be seen in his Cartoon. If Grandaiotbcer
Bruce upset the coach, is Grandmother Cross doing so very much
to keep it on its wheels ? And for the life of him Punch can’t see
why Bung should have half-an-hour more night-life allowed him in
London, than in Leeds and Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

Tuesday.—In the Lords we learnt with pleasure that the
Ashantee Loot is to be treated as prize. A little bit of butter on
the common men’s bread will make the handsome spread on Sir
Garnet’s big slice taste all the sweeter to his soldierly lips.

The Gold Coast Funds are to be drawn on for some compensation
to. Captain Glover and his Officers. Britannia would not have
minded putting her hand in her pocket for them too, as well as Sir
; Garnet.

The Government has no intention (the Duke op Richmond told
Lord Sidmouth) of altering the Education Act, ‘ ‘ with a view to
facilitate a return to the voluntary system in rural districts
where the School Board system had failed.” ... in other words, to
set the National School Committee up again, and put the School
| Board Committee down. Mr. Disraeli is too wise a man to believe
that the clock can be stopped by putting back the hands of the dial.

In the Commons, Mr. Blennerhasset moved, and moved very
cleverly, the Purchase of Irish Railways by the State. Unfortunately
his argument in favour of the purchase of Railways generally is all
against the purchase of Irish Railways in particular. They don’t
| pay because there is not trade and traffic enough, and State pur-
|J chase can’t make that. But their transfer to the State would create
,j a delightful batch of berths for gentlemen of limited income, with
“ frinds ” at head-quarters. Of course Mr. Blennerhasset scorned
!; the idea of suing ‘' in forma pauperis.” Whenever did an Irishman
i| so sue? Bedad, if he hadn’t a rap in his pocket, he’d talk as if he’d
the Bank at his back. Is it “pay ? ” Sure we don’t want England’s
dirty money. Ould Ireland ’ll be ready to stand all the risk, and
every shilling of the cost.—How ?—Why, out of her own resoorces.
Is it “loss”? Divil a loss in it at all, at all. Look at Belgium,
i Sure, State Railways pay there ; and why not in Ould Ireland ?

Mr. Goldsmid—ah, bad cess to him for a Jew!—moved an amend-
! ment, that the purchase wouldn’t pay, would breed jobs, and bother
Parliament. Of course if the State bought the Irish lines, it must
buy. the English and Scotch.. That would add a thousand
millions—stop ; let Punch try if he can put it down in cypher—
£1,000,000,000. There! cyphered in an instant! Doesn’t it look
imposing?—add a thousand millions {vide figures above) to the
National Debt, and bring us in annually four millions—on the

wrong side. Fancy Government working all the Railways!
Clap ham J unction would be clearness and order compared with it!
Think of Bradshaw in the shape of a monthly blue-book! That
would be confusion worse confounded. Then the 250,000 Railway
Servants, chosen by competitive examination, to be cut down from
time to time, under Treasury Minute, by some Bob Lowe of the
period, and the collieries, and steamers, and canals, and hotels
Government would have to buy! Even Punch's mighty mind
staggers under the idea !

The Collective Wisdom of England followed Goldsmid, but the
voice of Ireland was for Blennerhasset.

Sir Michael Beach, on behalf of Government, repudiated a
purchase, which would mean ten or fifteen per cent, rise in the
market price of shares. How was that to be made up out of traffic
that didn’t pay as it was ? Then the patronage—and in Ireland,
too! Poor Sir Michael, no doubt, saw in spirit all the genteel
inpecuniosity of Erin, patulce recubans sub tegmine Fagi, and felt that
no conceivable patulousness would be broad enough. He wondered
Home-Rulers should suggest a gigantic measure of centralisation
to take Irish Railways out of Irish hands. 0, bother! sure wouldn’t
it rise the price o’ shares, and be an illigant thing for the counthry
entirely! Wouldn’t it be Ireland for the Irish, and English
salaries into the bargain ? _

But two Irish voices were uplifted in a nobler strain. Why is
there no Ossian to sing the lament of Conolly, the true son of
Erin, “ blushing for a gigantic Job,” and the war-song of the
O’Gorman, descendant of a hundred chieftains, as he raised the
shout of “H. . . or Connaught,” and was reproved by the Speaker,
and told the House, in trumpet-tones, how the Irish Railways that
paid were Railways held by Irish shareholders, and managed by
Irish Directors, and how the dirty, shabby, bankrupt concerns were
those in which the base Saxon held the shares, and plundthered
and blond the red in the direction !

There was a hitch about the division; should it be on Amendment
or Resolution ? Ultimately a division was taken on both ; the
Resolution was negatived by 241 to 56; then the Amendment carried
by 235 to 59. Apparently the House wished to emphasise its “ No.”

Wednesday.—Colonel Hogg set a hornet’s nest buzzing and
sting-sharpening, by moving the Second Reading of his Metropoli- |
tan Buildings Bill, empowering the Metropolitan Board of Works
to regulate street-plans, buildings, noxious trades, &c.; i.e., to tread I
on the toes of Tested Right, whenever they are found trespassing (
on the public convenience. Vested Right won’t have its toes trodden
on by Hogg or Bull either, and showed its teeth through the {
mouths of Messrs. A. B. Hope, Samuda, Baillie-Cochrane, Nor- |
wood, Watney, Kay-Shuttleworth, Stevenson, and Kinnaird.
But that was all bark. Vested Right keeps its bite for the Select
Committee which Mr. Cross promises. If Vested Right doesn’t
gnaw the heart out of Colonel Hogg’s Bill, Punch will own that
the gallant soldier can fight to some purpose. But what a Hogg-
bait we shall have !

Then followed debate on the Second Reading of Mr. M‘Lagan’s
Game Bill for Scotland. Another case of “ questio vexata, ” between
many men and many minds; no agreement as to principles, and
much contradiction of interests. The Bill would take hares and
rabbits out of the Game-pale, give the property in game to tenants,
barring contract to the contrary, and transfer Game Law cases from
the Magistrate to the Sheriff.

Government, per Cross, objected to the Bill that it would settle
nothing, and unsettle everything. As nobody seemed much to like
it, the Bill was burked by 192 to 127. May Punch remind Scotch
tenant (and other) farmers, of the old story of the B-flats in the inn-
bed that would have lifted the sleeping traveller bodily on to the
floor, had they but been of a mind ?

Thursday.—The Lords took up (by Lord Carlingford), and then
dropped, the County Rate Guarantee to Irish Railways. Apparently
the subject is, more Hibernico, of the hot-potato kind.

In the Commons, in Committee of Supply on the Naval Estimates,
Childers—no longer “flying,” but “fighting” Childers—had it
out with Ward Hunt.

It was his first chance, he explained, of exhibiting his command
of the noble art of self-defence, since his health broke down four
years since. He proved— by his own figures—that the late Govern-
ment had saved nine millions in seven years, and vindicated—tri-
umphantly, till next confutation—the Childerian consolidations,
re-organisations, re-arrangements, overhaulings, and turnings upside
down, in Admiralty, Dockyards, Purchase and Store Departments,
Foreign Squadrons, Coast-Guard, and Retired List; pitched into
Mr. Hunt for bringing out a Naval Bogy to frighten John Bull ;
proved that we were more than a match at sea for France, the
United States, Germany and Italy together: that if we were at
war with any three of the strongest of them together, we could hold
our own at once in the Channel, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and
Pacific; that in six months we should have swept the seas of our ene-
mies’ commerce—in twelve should have sole command of the ocean—-
with not a war-flag flying all the world over but the Union Jack.