Punch: Punch (69.1875)

24

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [July 24, 1875.

PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

ll relations are, more or less, trou-
blesome. But of all troublesome
relations give us Cousins German
—(so argued my Loed Penzance,
Lords, Monday, July 12)—if they
are to be allowed to lay down the
new principle of international obli-
gation, that every State is bound
to frame laws for preserving not
only its own internal peace, but the
internal peace of all its neighbours.

Loed Deeby hardly thinks Count
Peeponchee means to go as far as
this ; but admits it is not easy to
say how far he does go. " For one foreign Court
to call upon another, under menaces, to silence its
press and public-speaking, was an act which had
excited, and he hoped would always excite, the
strongest feeling of sympathy and indignation in
this country."

Punch is glad to say ditto—as emphatically as
possible—to Loed Deeby.

(Commons.) In a fearful fog over the Employers
and Workmen, and the Conspiracy and Protection
of Property, Bills. The longer the House groped
about, the thicket' the fog seemed to grow. We
fear it is not yet cleared off. (See Friday's Essence.)

Tuesday (Lords).—In answer to Loed Wave-
ney's contemptuous description of the Aldershot operations as " not manoeuvres,
but field-days," Loed Cadogan, for Government, sung very small, pleading cost
of forage, difficulty of getting land. &c, &c, in extenuation of the very petty
proportions of this year's sham-warfare.

The Duke of Cambkidge, though far too well-disciplined to let out loud,
showed clearly enough what he thought of the value of operations on a large
scale, and of the sufficiency of the War Office reasons for shirking them this year.

Finally, Loed Cabdwell had the calm and congenial satisfaction of posing
as Mars of Autumn Manoeuvres, and doing the magnanimous over the military
muddling of the Government.

(Commons.) Me. Ceoss confirmed the incredible story of the Spalding
Shallows' sentence of a little girl to fourteen days' in prison and four years in
a Reformatory, for plucking a geranium-leaf! He had released the girl, and rebuked the Shallows
—one of them a " Reverend," to mend the matter. (The Reverend Gentleman has since explained,
w^x ^ appropriately enough, at an Odd Fellows' dinner. He wanted to play Providence. The Reformatory

was not a prison—only a boarding-school (with extra bolts), and he really thought the girl would be
much better done by there than at home. Spalding evidently rejoices in a " paternal" magistracy.)
Mb. Sullivan wants a [Science and Art Department in Dublin—with Boilers of its own (and a
hot Cole of its own, too, Me. Sullivan ? Surely, there are combustibles enough in Ireland already.) Sib Staffoed promised that
Government would see what could be done. Ireland—to judge by what she has done, unaided—would surely pay, and pay well, for
Art-teaching, in results, if not in money. Whatever she has not, Sister Cinderella has a taste.

Mb. P. A. Taylob wants the publication of the annual returns of crime and punishment in the Navy resumed. The Admiralty object
that the return, unexplained, is injurious to discipline, and exposes officers to misconstruction. Is there not a return published of
punishments in the Army ?

Me. Whalley moved for a Select Committee for his great Jesuit Hunt.

" He moved, but nothing followed—the dead air
"Was mute and motionless."

No one either seconded or opposed him, and so the matter—commissione infecta—dropped. What was the Doctor about ? Whalley is
doubtless great, but is there no Biggab ?

Wednesday (Commons).—Two " Previous Questions" and an Adjournment.

Me. Heygate wants cumulative voting in Election of Aldermen by Town-Councillors. Very good as far as it goes. But why not
in Elections of Town-Councillors ? Opinion on cumulative voting generally wants ripening.

Sie C. Dilke moved a Bill to enforce the Allotment Acts—the last dating from 1873. Doubtful if the Bills, as they are, do not pro-
vide sufficient coercive machinery ; and, besides, there has not been time to test the working of the last Act.

Adjournment of debate on Me. M'Cabthy's Motion to turn the Irish Public Works Commissioners into Reclaimers of Waste Lands,
for selling or letting. Ye gods, and loaves and fishes ! what a gigantic vista of land-jobbery—

, , , . " Heights piled on heights, and depths in depths withdrawn "—

rises to the dazzled view !

Thursday (Commons.)—-The vote for the Pbince of Wales's India Bill was fought through the House, with just enough haggling
to deprive the appropriation of perfect graciousness.

Everybody, but Mb. Diseaeli and Me. Gladstone, seems to think the Government has done the thing shabbily. To be sure, the
Government ought to know best.

Punch, with Me. Fawcett, would have preferred that England should have paid every penny of the bill. India has certainly
not invited the Pbince, and is as little in a position to invite him as she is to decline his visit: is certainly not as well able to afford the
expense of entertaining him as Canada was. As to the Reeling of the Working-men (Punch is a representative Working-man, and knows),
nineteenth-twentieths of them—as Mb. Bubt, with characteristic straight-forwardness, admitted—neither think, nor care a ha penny
about the matter: the other twentieth, including the blatant gentlemen who get up nasty noisy little mobs in Trafalgar Square, and
who claim to speak for the Working-men, because they speak, peculiarly, for themselves, oppose the visit and the grant for it—as they
oppose everything suggested by their betters, and, in particular, all grants to members of the Royal Family. They have found just
enough voice in Parliament to show how thoroughly they stand opposed to general opinion.

Sie Wilfbid, for once, was rather forced, than gracious, in his fooling. The ouly hit of his speech worthy of himself or Punch
was the suggestion that, if the Peince's trip was to be recommended from the educational stand-point, it should be in the interests rather
of Ministers than the Pbince. For example, what a good thing it would be if the President and Secretary of the Board of Trade could
have the opportunity of a voyage to India to learn something about shipping!