Punch (72.1877)

May 5, 1877.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 195

THE TRIUMPHS OF TEMPER.

Fare (out of patience at the fourth " jib " in a Mile). " Hi, this won't do ! I shall get out ! "

Cabby (through the trap, in a whisper). "Ah thin, Sor, niver mind her! Sit still! Don't give her the Satisfaction av
knowin' she's got rid av ye ! 1"

The row was to be, and nothing anybody could have said or done
would have prevented it. What a wonderfully useful business
Diplomacy appears to be, as represented by Lord Derby ! In fact, his
Lordship seems to design Britannia, very much as Punch might, as
a Dame Partington, armed with the Diplomatic Mop, trying to sweep
back the sea of Russ aggression. If that is a right view of the
matter, " Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere f "—what busi-
ness had Lord Salisbury at the Conference, or Lord Derby at the
laboriously useless building of the Asses' Bridge ?

[Commons.)—Mr. Shaw moved for a Select Committee to inquire
into the nature, extent, and grounds of the demand made by a large
proportion of the Irish people for the uncoupling of the Keltic cat
from the Saxon bull-dog. The night's division proved, as a fact,
what the mover began by admitting as a statement, that the con-
cession of Home-Rule is out of the pale of practical politics.

Mr. King - Harman seconded the Motion; Messrs. Butt, Blen-
nerhasset, O'Shaughnessy, Sir Colman O'Loghlen, and Sir
W. Lawson, supported it; Mr. C. Lewis, Mr. "W. Johnston,
and Mr. Bruen, for Irish constituencies, protested against it; the
Right Honble. W. E. Forster knocked it out of time ; Professor
Fawcett danced over it; Lord Hartington gave it a parting kick,
and finally the House administered the coup de grace to it by a
division of 417 to 67, of whom thirteen only were English Members.
In fact there was no need of a coup de grace. The Motion was
still-born. Mr. O'Donnell, the Secretary of the Home-Rule Con-
federation, had killed it in embryo by his letter to the Times, pro-
claiming that the Irish vote, in English constituencies, would be given
" solid," to the highest bidder, and that the Liberals must choose
between supporting Home-Rule and exclusion from Office " till
the crack of doom."

As Messrs. Forster and Fawcett both gave the Home-Rulers
clearly to understand, the Liberal party would a thousand times rather
take their chance of exclusion for ever from the Government of a
United Kingdom, than their chance of a share in the government of
a divided one, by aid of the Home-Rule vote. In a word, the Par-
Lament of the United Kingdom will not help the agents of Irish
disaffection to take the muzzle from the Kilkenny cats, and set those

vicious and vindictive animals worrying each other in the ring of
a Palace Green Parliament-House, to the delight of cynics and
the shame of intelligent and civilised men.

If Home-Rule means merely Local Self-Government, it can be
given under that name. If it means Repeal of the Union—as it
does mean in the minds of its sincerest supporters—it cannot be
given at all. The sooner Ireland puts that into her dudeen, and
smokes it, the better for her.

Tuesday's debate was chiefly valuable for the emphasis with which
it Records that determination. We may tbank Mr. O'Donnell's
letter for bringing the Home-Rule imposthume (our printer had
printed " imposthure ") to a head. To-night's talk quite discharged
it. Time and prosperity must be left to cure the ill-humours in the
Irish body politic.of which the itch for Home-Rule is a symptom.

Sir M. Hicks-Beach flung a little-needed new apple of discord into
the debate by charging Mr. Gladstone with having written to recom-
mend Mr. Kay to the Liberal constituency of Salford, after, and
although, he had taken the Home-Rule shilling. Sir Michael was
out in his dates. Mr. Gladstone showed that his letter had been
written in Mr. Cawley's lifetime, long before Mr. Kay was a can-
didate for Salford even, much more before he had made friends of
the solid Irish of that highly-Hibernianised constituency.

Wednesday.—Mr. Hopwood moved the Second Reading of a Sum-
mary Proceedings Bill, dealing with the subject-matter of a Govern-
ment Bill already before the House. Why cross Cross ? So the
House settled Hopwood by 228 to 164.

Scotch Bill for doing away with Hypothec floored for the time
being by a quarter of an hour's severe operation of Gregory's
Mixture of hard fact and hard law.

Thursday.—Seven hours in the Lords over the Duke oe Rich-
mond's Burials Bill—for aggravating the Dissenters' grievance,
under the show of removing it. They want equality in the parish
churchyard. The Bill gives them toleration. They want their own
services over their dead. It gives them " silence." Silence does not
imply Non-conformist consent—or content either ; and Lord Gran-
ville became the mouth-piece of their non-content, in his Amend-
ment that in this matter no measure would be satisfactory which did