Punch (70.1876)

April 8, 1876.] PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 129

PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

alad-mixing is suggested
by the composition of
the Oxford Commission
{Lords, Mondayt .March
21th). There is Lord
Selborne for the lettuce,
Mr. Matthew White
Ridley for the oil, Sib,
Henry Maine for the salt,
Dr. Montague Bernakd
for the pepper, Me. Justice
Grove for the tarragon,
Dean Burg on for the
vinegar, and Lord Redes-
daie for the mustard. The
Commission is to be for
four, not seven years.
A good deal may be done
in four years. But ivill
this Commission do much P
Burgon and Redesdale
forbid!

The Duke of Richmond
promises the Duke of
Northumberland a Royal
Commission to inquire into
noxious vapours — the
breath of Vested Right in
its most unsavoury forms
of candle, soap, and
manure manufacturing,
bone - boiling, alkali -
making, copper-smelting,
and so forth—but does not think the Commission should recommend
what legislative measures are required to deal with these rank
offences, which smell to heaven at least as strongly as Claudius's
fratricide. Parliament as well as the public would have reason to
thank the Royal Commission that could suggest any legal remedy
for such nuisances tbat would work. Otherwise, we hardly see the
good of the inquiry. The nuisances are admitted, and we have
plenty of legal remedies that won't work, already.

Lord Cairns doesn't see his way for the present to a Marriage
Act to harmonise the law of connubial coupling for England, Scot-
land, and Ireland. More shame for John, Sandy, and Pat, who
are content to leave it a puzzle for legal heads to solve when one
and one make one, and when they make two, by the law of the three
countries.

{Commons.)—Samuel's son trying to undo the work of Benjamin.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer did his best, but to little pur-
pose, to temper the wind to the shorn bulls, by explaining away the
non-publication of Cave's Report. It won't do. Everything is
presumed against our unfortunate client, the Khedive. Benjamin
has smitten the Egjrptians hip and thigh; and Poor Ismail brought
to his marrow-bones by a fall of ten per cent, in less than ten days,
may well pray, " Save me from my friends ! "

Ihe Leader of the Government promises the Leader of the Oppo-
sition an opening for a set-to, on the vote for the cost of Mr. Cave's
mission. Somebody ought to catch it, hot and heavy.

In Committee on Merchant Shipping Bill, Mr. Plimsoll tem-
perately, and therefore powerfully, pleaded for his Amendment
enforcing a survey of all unclassed ships, in preference to the
Government plan of punishing the Owner who sends an unseaworthy
ship to sea. The Country's feeling goes with Plimsoll ; and Punch
is not by any means inclined to bow down to the authority, as pleaded
by Mr. Shaw Lefevre, of nearly every President of the Board of
Trade and all the permanent officials in favour of penalties and
against the protective operation of survey.

After a long discussion—in which Mr. Forster's adherence to
Mr. Plimsoll is worth noting—the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer threw his weight into the scale against Plimsoll, declaring
that the Government, after much balancing of the two plans, had
deliberately preferred punishment to enforced survey, as a preven-
tive of unseaworthiness. The fear is that the State Surveying
Board would finally swallow up all the private surveying bodies
like Lloyd's, and that this would create a false security, and exone-
rate shipowners from responsibility. So pleads Mr. Norwood. We
don't feel quite disposed to take the word of the wolves on the
efficacy of competing systems of sheep-watching. But the end was
—after a debate, in which Mr. Plimsoll put his ease very
effectively, and the Board of Trade (till the Chancellor of the
Exchequer came to the President's aid) very weakly—the defeat of
the Amendment by 247 to 110. So be it. Let us see how penalty
works. We may yet come to prevention.

Tuesday {Lords).—The Duke of Buccleuch indignantly disclaims
the intention of seconding Lord Shaftesbury when he asks the
Peers respectfully to pray Her Majesty not to flaunt Imperial
Purple in her Bull's face. We are only sorry the Duke is not going
to do about the most sensible thing a Conservative Peer could do in
this unlucky business. As Government did not concert with Op-
position before bringing in the Bill, their best course would be so to
concert before passing it. But they won't—the more's the pity.

{Commons.)—Mr. Disraeli fenced and dodged about a question of
Mr. Anderson's as to the precedents for the Queen's going abroad
during the sitting of Parliament. Mr. Disraeli is not happy in
this kind of performance, which is always a dangerous one. Even
so popular and skilled a performer as Palmerston damaged himself
seriously at it. The House is glad to laugh at'a smart answer to an
awkward question, but, in the long run, resents being poked
fun at.

Government had the narrowest escape from a very damaging de-
feat on Mr. Meldon's Motion for assimilating the English and Irish
Borough Franchise—in other words, for giving household suffrage in
Irish boroughs.

To be sure, household suffrage in England corresponds to niud-
cabinhold suffrage in Ireland. We should have thought this
a weightier distinction than it appears to John Bright, who
came out quite in his old form, so that the Home-Rulers found
themselves in a minority—would it be more Irish to say a large, or
a small one ?—of 166 to 179, and nearly shouted themselves into
hysterics. Punch, from his invisible seat in the gallery, turned his
eyes tenderly away from the Major, out of respect for his feelings.

The Irish Reform Bill stops the way! Reform Bill coming down!

Wednesday.—An Irish afternoon, in the coolest sense of the word.
Mr. Butt, with inimitable assurance, brought forward what he
called a Land Tenure—but which Mr. Herbert of Muckross' more
correctly described as a Land Transfer—Bill for Ireland. The
Honourable and Learned Member for Limerick proposes to deprive
Landlords of the power of Eviction, except for 'non-payment of
rents, to be settled by the award of a Court of Arbitration. This,
with a variety of other limitations and conditions, would result in
what Mr. Herbert not unfairly described as a transfer of the land
of Ireland to the Tenant-Farmers, reducing the Landlords to
uncertain annuitants on rent-charges, the amount of which would
be very much at their Tenants' mercy.

The House wasted the afternoon on this wTonderful specimen of
Home-Rule Legislation, and finally paid it the ill-deserved com-
pliment of an adjournment till Monday. Lord Hartington
was somehow crowded out, or he ought to have stood by Sir
M. H. Beach in putting down his foot on this audacious attempt
at confiscation. Irish Landlords may be bad enough—some of them
—but does what we know of Irish Tenants warrant any hope for
Ireland from putting them in their Landlords' shoes ? _ There is
" property " in the serious, and " property " in the theatrical sense.
We may help Mr. Butt's Irish mob to treat the one as if it were the
other. But the House of Commons should not be the place to let the
distinction be disregarded, even for a Wednesday afternoon.

Thursday {Lords).—The Royal Titles Bill read a _Second Time,
without a division—except of opinion. But that division found as
full and potent voice as if their Lordships had been voting " Aye "
and "No." The Duke of Somerset spoke his protest; and when
the straightforwardness of Lord Grey—christen it " crotcheti-
ness" if you please, you can't deny the intelligence and indepen-
dence that are worked into its warp and woof—the plain-spoken
sense of Lord Lawrence, the experience of Lord Waveney, the
whimsical keenness of Lord Stanley of Alderley, the polished
humour of Lord Granville, were pitted against the perfunctory
pleading of the Duke of Richmond and the trenchant audacity of
the Marquis of Salisbury, can we wonder if filigree "Empress"
kicked the beam against weighty " Queen " ?

What we do wonder at is, that the President of the Council and
the Indian Secretary should dare maintain that the dislike to the
title is a figment of faction, and the public meetings and petitions
against it a " got-up " thing ! Your motto, my Lords, your motto
— (see your Punch of last week) — " Kolumus nomen Pegince
mutari: " Speak it out—the voice of England is ready to echo you.

{Commons.)—Mr. Cross announced Tyler's fiat, closing Ham-
mersmith Bridge on Boat-Race day.

More Merchant Shipping.

Friday {Lords).—A gallant attempt by Lord Granville to turn
Lord Salisbury's flank. Instead of doing away with the "Idle
Fellowships "—falsely so called—Lord Granville proposed to open
the Clerical ones! Audacious ! But strange to say 40 to 57 went
along with this audacious innovator.

The Unattached Students may thank the Archbishop of Canter-
bury for empowering the Commissioners to employ surplus funds in
founding scholarships tenable by these well-deserving waifs—these
diligent dogs who eat of the crumbs from the rich men's tables.

{Commons.)—Chambers and Newdegaie, like Knight-Templars,

vol. lxx,

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