Punch (70.1876)

243

PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHAEIVARL

[June 17, 1876.

PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

Whitsuntide holidays!

" How sweet is Eest by honest Labour won,
Pause between work to do, and work well done :
Such rest as, by the leave of Whitsun weather,
Brings Prince, and Premier, and Punch together,
To quaff cool cups, and crack the genial joke,
And watch, serene, life's troubles end in smoke.
That Punch, and Prince, and Premier are blest,
Whose lines have fallen in the pleasant West:
'Gainst you no Powers combine, no Sottas plot;
For you friends wax not cold, insurgents hot:
No midnight fetvah hurls you from your states,
Nor darkling Death on Deposition waits."

In other words, Whitsuntide holidays in St. Stephen's are a very
different thing indeed from Whitsuntide horrors in Stamboul—
whether for Prince, Premier, or Philosopher. You see what a plea-
sant picture the one makes in the pages of Punch. Who could bear
to see faithfully painted the intolerable iniquities of the other ?

But holidays will come to an end, and the pleasantest the most
quickly. Ere Punch had fairly inhaled his fill of midsummer air,
scented with hawthorn, he finds himself back again, a busy-bee,

extracting Essence from the flowers of Rhetoric and the fruits of
Legislation, in the Parliamentary parterres of Westminster.

Thursday.—Back to the Commons—the very thing for the Com-
mons, one would have said, unsated with their short Whitsun-
week's holiday. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, backed by Mr. Fawcett and
Lord E. Fitzmadeice, made a gallant struggle to get a fixed mini-
mum of reservation from the waste for recreation-grounds or field-
gardens. Mr. Cross maintained his ground, that it was better to
avoid maxima and minima, and let the amount of reservation in each
case be settled on its own merits.

The misfortune is, that if " De minimis non curat lex," it may
be feared the Commissioners will be often too like the law they
administer, and go on not caring either.

In answer to Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Cross explained how he meant
to deal with the thirty-four Commons now scheduled for enclosure.
The schemes are to be reported upon by one of the Commissioners—
Mr. Caird—and a gentleman appointed for the purpose ; and on their
report the arrangements are to be reconsidered.

The County Courts are to have jurisdiction to prevent local en-
closures ; but Mr. Cross declined to accept a clause moved by Sir