Punch (72.1877)

182

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[April 28, 1877.

PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

nd has it come to this! So completely has the Asses' Bridge broken down, that it
cannot even support a night's talk in the Lords. On Monday, April 16, Lord
Granville was booked to call attention to the Protocol, but, as in the case of
Glendower's call of spirits from the vasty deep, Punch must ask, like Hotspur,
"will it come ? " It would seem not; for the audience of the Upper House,
not the densest—Punch begs pardon, not the most crowded—as a rule, hardly
rose beyond the average to hear what Lord Granville had to say against, and
\a r . Lord Derry for the extinguisher that has taken—or is taking—fire.

^ ^ -_\_ j)e mortuis nil nisi bonum is a rule for Lords as for Commons^ The Pro-

tocol is dead. As nothing good can be said of the deceased diplomatic abortion,
the only alternative is to say nothing. Lord Derby said nothing, at consi-
derable length. The Marquis oe Lansdowne and the Earl of Dudley said their dittos to Lokd Granville. The Protocol haying
received its fitting "finis " from four flat speeches, the conversation collapsed; and the Protocol, with its declarations, passes away into
the large limbo of Diplomatic Fizzles.

{Commons.)— Mr. Bourke has received a partial return of arrests, sentences, and executions of sentences on account of the Bulgarian
uprising, and is ready to table them whenever Mr. Gladstone will move. A partial return, no doubt, it must be, omitting, as it does,
the name of every Moslem of rank or note who took the lead in the atrocities. "While Achmet, Sheeket, and Toosoon, so far from
being punished for their share in the Bulgarian horrors, have been promoted, Mr. Bourke may as well put the Turkish returns in his
pipe, and smoke them, as lay them on the table of the House. Vestigia nulla retrorsum (" I make no returns") might be the
Turks' motto for massacres and massacred alike. " Why should I, when I neither retrace my steps nor punish my offenders ? "

The Pera Correspondent of the Times, the other day, reported the bastinadoing to death of one Nasim, a student in the military school
at Constantinople, who had ventured to draw up a memorial demanding the recall of Midhat. Musurus Pasha has categorically
denied the fact. That is Musurus Pasha's business. Mr. Jocelyn now repeats the denial, and so does the Telegraph Correspondent.
The last declares he has seen and identified Nasim. That is evidence or would be if the identification is clear.

Let us hope the story is not true, and that its falsehood is disprovable by something more trustworthy than Turkish official denials.
A lively debate on the Mutiny Bills, Army and Navy, with lots of amendments moved. This is a novelty. Parnell, Power, and
Sullivan, to say nothing of Peter Taylor, all busy in moving reductions of punishment, from solitary confinement to the Cat
upwards. Mr. Parnell was rude enough to ask Mr. Ward Hunt how he would like, if he unfortunately fell asleep on his post, to incur
the punishment of penal servitude, death, or imprisonment with hard labour. Really, that is rather too personal, Mr. Parnell.
Besides, you forget the First Lord's excuse if he should fall asleep on the Treasury Bench (which we presume is his Parliamentary