Punch (68.1875)

Febbuary 27, 1875.]

PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHAKIVARL

8?

PUNCH’S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

rhetoric,” only complaining that it was too
most good speeches, including his

own, were

OW officials °rc
trained to keep
their countenances
in answering a cer-
tain class of Parlia-
mentary questions
is a mystery of
Administrative
Education, which
has always passed
even Punch's large
comprehension.
As, lor instance,
when Loud R.
Chuechill rose,
on Monday, Feb.
15, gravely to ask,
inter alia, the
possible cost and
probable perils of
the proposed Arc-
tic Expedition.
Me. A. Egeeton,
with admirable
gravity, gave the
estimated cost at
£98,000, and the probable perils as, in
the opinion of those most able to judge,
“not considerable.”

In spite of a threatening question
from Ohkvat.i kr o’Gleet, Her Majesty’s
Ministers have determined to recom-
mend Hek Majesty to recognise the ex-
isting Government of Spain.

Me. Stjllivan had a happy hour—
quite after his own heart—of tempest
in a tumbler over Me. Lopes’s descrip-
tion of the Home-Rulers in the House
of Commons as a “ disreputable band.”
He took occasion to rake up an after-
dinner speech of Sle John Astley, in
which that worthy Lincolnshire Baronet had
painted the same party in colours more faithful
than flattering. But the well of Truth is, some-
times, one of those wells which are best let alone.
The jovial Baronet having had the good taste to
withdraw what he had the bad taste to blurt
out, Mb. Sullivan ascribed the withdrawal to
the polite inquiries of an Irish military friend of
the Chevaliee O’Cleey—“ as to the state of his
health, more particularly his trigger-finger.”
Me. Diseaeli complimented the honour-
able Member for Louth on his “glowing
long, and deprecated turning after-dinner speeches into matters of privilege. In fact,
after-dinner speeches (Irish Members, we should have thought, would have been the

raght, would have been the
lal imputation, which Me.

last to complain of a little post-prandial licence). He recommended Me. Lopes to disclaim all person _

Lopes rather sulkily did; and the tempest in a tumbler, raised by Me. Sullivan, at once subsided, to leave time for a long talk over
the Second Reading of the Unwholesome Dwellings Bill, which had better have been kept for Committee, fixed for the 4th of March.

Tuesday.—A day not to be marked with a white stone in the Parliamentary Register, for it brought news of the Return of
Db. Kenealy (shall we say, as the 1Englishman says, the great and good?) for Stoke-upon-Trent, and of John Mitchell, the escaped
eonvict of 1852, for Tipperary. The ill-news was soon buzzed through the lobbies,

“And M.P.’s stood dumb,
1 The two ; they come, they come !’ ”

Or whispered with white lips,

But business must be got on with, even under the cloud of such an invasion. Me. Ward Hunt eased the anxious mind of Me. E. Reed,
who is afraid that the new religious service on the christening of H.M.’s ships may interfere with their launching. The prayers will ba
so timed as not to interfere with ways, wedges, or dogshores.

England will not be sorry to learn that Britannia is not going to postpone her Arctic enterprise till she can induce Germania,
Scandinavia, or Russia to climb the Pole along with her.

Sib J. Astley, Lincolnshire Bart., the bold speaker whose picture of the Home-Rulers, painted in rich after-dinner colours, was
yesterday held up to the House by Me. Sullivan, feels natural anxiety lest those who do not know him for a soldier might think he
had been frightened by an Irishman. So he read the letter which was supposed to have frightened him, and his answer to it,
explaining, at the same time, that, feeling he was wrong, he had said so, but emphatically not under terror of Chevaliee O’Cleey’s
possible pistol. That, in fact, was an O’Clerical error. Astley’s was as rapid an act as Sullivan’s was lengthy; and the blunt
simplicity of the Lincolnshire Baronet contrasted refreshingly with the blatant rhetoric of the Irish journalist.

Me. Newdegate asked and got leave to bring in his hardy annual, the Bill for putting Monks and Nuns under inspection. Second
Reading of Salt’s Bill for facilitating Public Worship in certain cases of clerical difficulty or default—for putting salt, as one may say,
on the tails of neglectful or over-exalted parsons—and of Sie H. James’s, for clipping the charges of Parliamentary returning-officers,
which now fly decidedly too high.

Then, tidings of the Tipperary Election having reached Westminster with the proverbial speed of ill news, Me. Habt Dyke moved for
the papers necessary to prove John Mitchell a convicted felon, who has neither received the Royal Pardon nor served out his sentence,
and is therefore disqualified for M.P. Taking “ Dyke ” in its north-country sense of “ barrier,” the work of barricading the House
against felonious entry fell into the right hands. Some of the Irish Members talked of “indecent haste,” and divided, against