Punch (71.1876)

26

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[July 22, 1876.

TRANSPORT.

Curate {reproachfully). "And I'm afraid you've taken more Beer to-
Night than is good for you, GlLES."

Inebriated Rustic. " Sure-ly, Sir, I dare saye I could a' carried it Hom'
easier in a Jar ! "

the official cold douche to Mr. Forster, who had questioned him as to the
reported atrocities in Bulgaria.

The Premier's answer was not in good taste. It is unbecoming the Head
of Her Majesty's Government to get a laugh out of the extent of prison accom-
modation in Bulgaria, or the Bashi-Bazouks' habits of throat-cutting. From
our Consuls at Ragusa, Cettigne, and Belgrade, and even at Pkillipopolis and
Adrianople, the Government may have received "no accounts in which these
details are mentioned," and yet the details may be in the main true. It seems
strange that the Daily Neics's "Own Correspondent" should be so much more
fully informed than our own Government's! But all England must wish, with
Punch, that the most cold-drawn account may prove the truest.

Great fight on going into Committee on Education Bill between the Secularists
and Nonconformists, under the lead of Mr. Richard, and the supporters of the
Government Bill of all shades of moderate opinion.

Mr. Hichard, under cover of his Amendment declaring compulsion unjust till
all elementary schools are under public management, moved up his big guns,
double-shotted with all the grievances of the Nonconformists, social and theo-
logical, as well as educational. Briskly answered by the batteries of Hubbard,
Greene, Paget, Hall, Cowper-Temple, and General the Marquis of
Hartington, against the cross-fire of Jenkins, Morley, Macarthur, Mundella,
and Waddy, the Nonconformist artillery was finally silenced, and victory
declared for the Government by a decisive division of 317 to 99.

With a conscience-clause to protect the Nonconformists, and with Mr.
Forster's Amendment enforcing a report to the Educational Department of all
cases of its infringement, Punch cannot but think the religious difficulty—so far
as it is not political—fairly provided for ; and is compelled to believe that the
division represents the opinion of the country, as at present advised. As national
and not denominational representative of the British Public, he does not feel
called upon to find fault with it.

Tuesday {Lords).—Second Heading of Poor Law Amendment Bill,—a more
useful than showy measure, giving much needed powers for the cutting and
carving of Unions, and bringing us a long step nearer the end of settlement, by
making paupers irremoveable after three years' residence.

{Commons.)—Morning Sitting. In Committee on Education Bill. Lord
Sandon shrinks from making education between five and ten compulsory, but

does not shrink from prohibiting the employment of
children between ten and fourteen, unless they pass the
gate of the three R's, or can prove five years continuous
school attendances of 250 days a year. In other words,
if parents have failed in educating their children under
ten, the children shall be debarred from earning a liveli-
hood between ten and fourteen !

This is punishing the children for the parents' laches
with a vengeance. Common sense says No to such an
unreasonable and unworkable proposition. Lord F.
Cavendish has mitigated its absurdity by his amend-
ment—which the Government has had the sense to accept
—exempting from the prohibition half-timers under the
Factory Acts or children in necessary and beneficial
employment attending school under the bye-laws of a
local authority.

In the Evening Sitting Lord F. Hervey moved the
expediency of legislating for the improvement of the
Law as to the qualifications and appointment of Coroners,
and the conduct of Inquests. " Crowner's 'Quest Law"
has been a subject of ridicule since the Grave-digger in
Hamlet gave his famous illustration of it. it has
received many a striking illustration since. But the
last straw that broke the Crowner's back has been laid on
by a recent miscarriage of justice in a Crowner's hands
which will occur to all minds, though Lord F. Hervey
thought it better not to mention it.

Oh, the much enduring Conservatism of England,
which has preserved with little change and less im-
provement a machinery for investigating cases of sudden
death, invented, if tradition can be trusted, in the time of
Alfred the Great ! The first notice in relation to the
Coroner's office Loud Hervey had found was a case in
which that wise monarch had hanged a Judge for treat-
ing the verdict of a Coroner's Inquest as conclusive.

The indictment was in many counts, but all may be
taken as proven. The only question is, whether the
office should be reformed or abolished, to make room for
a new and completer instrument of inquiry. Even Mr.
Head, chosen representative of the stable bucolic mind,
was for going this length ; and though Me. Cross would
retain the name, he is ready to alter election, qualifica-
tions, and other conditions so completely that the Coroner's
office, after Cross has sat upon it, promises to be like the
Irishman's knife, that was the same knife after it had
been fitted with a new haft and new blades, or Sir John
Cutler's famous stockings, whose identity was insisted
upon after the original material had disappeared under
repeated darnings.

Has a First Lord of the Admiralty an ex-officio place
in all Naval Messes ? Mr. Ward Hunt seems disposed
to assert such a right. In the Naval Mess of to-night the
House was within twelve of leaving him. The Admiralty
is often accused of being " pound-foolish," but in the case
of Chaplain Penny v. Captain Sullivan, very effectively
but fairly stated by Mr. E. Ashley, it cannot be allowed
the usual correlative merit of being " penny-wise."

Why had not Mr. Richard Captain Sullivan's case
for use on Monday night, in his summary of the wrongs
of the Nonconformist? For Captain Sullivan is
a Nonconformist Captain, on whom the Admiralty
had cruelly, and no doubt of malice aforethought,
quartered one Penny, the highest of High Church
Chaplains. Pent up in a ship, Nonconformity and
High Church must explode, as inevitably as hydro-
gen and oxygen in a close vessel on passage of the
spark from a Leyden jar. And when they did,
and the Reverend Penny had taken every oppor-
tunity of showing that he didn't care a farthing for
Cartain Sullivan, and insisted on wearing crosses
on his stole (which the Captain characteristically
complained of as " not uniform,") and on chanting,
and holding long services in the teeth of the Naval
regulations, and in treading on the Captain's theo-
logical corns in his sermons, the Admiralty removed
the Captain from his ship, and meant to remove the
Chaplain, but didn't—by an accident—and has since
refused the Captain a court-martial, Mr. Ward Hunt
contending that though the matter was serious enough
for dismissal of a Captain, it was altogether below the
dignity of a court-martial. Yet it wras strictly an affair
between combatant officers, a Captain on the one side,
and an officer of the Church Militant on the other.

The House gave Mr. Ward Hunt a tolerably intel-
ligible intimation of their opinions by a division of 91 to
103 ; every naval officer who spoke having spoken in