Punch (72.1877)

280

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[June 23, 1877.

Teaching: of Cookery,—came the old question about the release of
the Fenian prisoners, and elicited the old answer. There are only
six of them: two for murder, three soldiers, and one, sentenced
after special consideration of his case, to fifteen years,—a term
which may be shortened.

Of course Paenell and Biggae were in the thick of it. The Major
—more power to him—pointed out that the great mistake made by
these men was, that they did not succeed. He quoted the case of
Count Axdeassy, who once bore arms against the Emperor of Austria:
" The man had been a political offender, but what was he to-day ?—
Prime Minister of Austria."

The Major should have quoted the case of Gavan Duffy: " The
man had been a political offender against the British Govern-
ment, but what had he become since ?—Prime Minister of a great
British Colony."

A fight in Supply over Queen's Plates—in which the Major came
out in good "form,"—and Secret Service Money, a great chance
for Paenell and Rylands, who boasted, not without reason, that
he had unearthed one indefensible appropriation of the fund to
augmentation of the salary of the man who managed it. But what
service could be more secret than spending secret-service money ?
After all, if you can't trust your Government to do its dirty work
as cheaply as possible, what can you trust it to do ?

Tuesday (Lords).—Nothing done, but no time spent in doing it.
That is the distinctive beauty of the Upper House.

[Commons, Morning Sitting).—Me. Boueke will see Loed Robebt
Montagu at the Holy Land before he '11 tell him anything about
where the July dividends on Egyptian Stocks are to come from.
Such is the style in which Foreign Office insolence dares insult the
laudable desire for information in private Members!

Biggae and Paenell had such a morning of it on the Prisons
Bill. They moved a great deal, but didn't carry anything. If
these noble Arcadians had the ordering of prisons, what pleasant
places of sojourn they would be—i.e., for prisoners ! But wouldn't
the Governors and Warders have a nice time of it!

Me. Sheridan's clause, providing that no prisoner should be kept
in custodv untried for longer than three months, was only lost by
135 to 165.

Let Me. Ceoss see to it. He will have to fit our judicial arrange-
ments to secure that. Long intervals between arrest and trial
should ere this have been among things of the past.

(Evening Sitting). — Sie E. Wilmot moved for revision —
Me. Pease, for abolition — of the Punishment of Death. An
interesting debate, marked by a speech from John Beight,
prompted and uplifted by real feeling. The discussion has at least
got lifted out of its old ruts. All agree now that it is impossible to
maintain rationally that death punishments are beyond the right of
Governments. The question is as to their policy—their effect in check-
ing capital crime. On that authorities in and out of Parliament
diifer, and will apparently continue to differ. The statistics are un-
trustworthy. Cases that Me. Pease quoted to show the non-deterrent
effect of death punishments in the case of murder the Solicitob-
Geneeal appealed to to show their deterrent effect.

Punch cannot but believe that there is a class of ruffians who are
only checked by fear of the gallows from carrying their brutality
to those in their power beyond cruelty to deadly violence ; that the
gallows ought to be maintained mainly for these wretches, and that
to abolish the terror of it would be to expose to new dangers a most
helpless class of sufferers. But everyone of sense who has studied
the subject is agreed that our law, which now lumps under the same
name of Murder, offences that range from the most venial to
the most heinous forms of homicide, requires alteration: and it is
much to the discredit of our law-givers that this foul blot has
not long since been wiped away. But so long as John Bull's
juries can be trusted to deal fairly and like men of sense and cou-
rage with any charge that carries death as its punishment, so as
not, on the one hand, to see circonstance attenuante in the gallows,
when there is no other ; and, on the other, so as to distinguish
as their reason bids them between " murder " and " manslaughter,"
even when the law and the judge fail to draw the distinction
(as seems to have been the case in the instance of Doherti", quoted
by John Beight), so long Punch cannot regret that the gallows is
maintained as the ultima ratio legum for defence of insufficiently
defended life against reckless ruffianism. For this, and this only,
he would have the Tyburn Tree kept up, and in view of this danger
—a real one, as he believes—he would feel less comfortable if it
were cut down.

Wednesday —-Mirabile dictu ! an Irish Bill for the Assimilation
of Irish to English Parliamentary Registration read a Second Time.
It is perhaps enough to say, in explanation of this phenomenon,
that the Bill was moved by Me. Mitchell Heney, and neither
supported nor obstructed by Biggae and Paenell.

Cheques in practice pass like bank-notes. If good, no question is
askt-d how the holder came by them. But "crossed cheques" are
■< only payable through bankers. An Act last year provided that if

the drawer of a crossed cheque write "Not negotiable" across it, the
banker who pays it does so at his peril. Me. Hubbaed wants to
extend this to all crossed cheques. It is purely a question of mer-
cantile convenience, and the House declined to disturb last year's
Act by 175 to 66.

Ladies find cheque-law hard enough to understand as it is; but if
the House kept on altering it, what would become of the unhappy
females who enjoy the masculine right of keeping their own cheque-
books ?

Thursday (Lords).—The Priest in Absolution, and The Priest at
Prayer, are manuals savouring, even in their titles, more of Popery
than Protestantism. But when it comes to the reading of them, the
savour becomes something that can only be described as a stink.

Loed Redesdale called their Lordships' attention to these offen-
sive, insidious, and indecent little shoves to sacerdotalism, before a
House in which the Bench of Bishops was represented by five
prelates, of whom the Aechbishop of Canteebuey and the Bishop
of Gloucestee and Beistol joined in denunciation of these prurient
and pernicious aids to impurity, and the Society of the Cross under
whose auspices they are issued. Punch would like to catch one of
the priestly handlers of these manuals inside his premises!

Me. Tooth, it seems, is Secretary to the Foreign Mission of this
Society. A Mission so eminently foreign to the Church of England
may well count the notorious Dens among its authorities. But if
the Society and its Foreign Secretary will insist on laying and in-
cubating the Popish egg, at least they should not be allowed snug
English livings to hatch 'em in.

(Commons).—The Government declines to give Me. Smyth a day
for the Irish Sunday Closing Bill. Sie Staffoed Nobthcote sug-
gested that Sie Wilfeid Lawson should give up the Wednesday he
has been lucky enough to get for the trotting out of his own Per-
missive hobby. Sir Wilfeid agreed, if Government would take up
Me. Smyth's Bill as a Government measure. It has all but bound
itself to do as much.

The Prisons Bill was got through Report in spite of all the
obstructive activity of Me. Paenell.

Me. Waddy and Me. Goschen drew down rebuke from both Irish
and English, by protesting against " kid-glove treatment of treason-
felony." One can understand such an outburst on the part of those
who may be supposed to look on the preaching of treason-felony as
the business of a National pulpit. But that English Liberals should
protest against treating treason-felons as criminals is less easy to
explain.

When Me. Cowen invokes the right of insurrection he seems to
forget that this is one of the rights which have a wrong at the
bottom of them. The right which is sacred when exerted against
brute-force and oppression, becomes a wrong instead of a right
when invoked against law-governed liberty. Treason-felons at this
day in this country are unjustifiable disturbers of the peace; rebels
not against oppression, but against order, progress, and law-regu-
lated removal of abuses.

Universities Bill ordered for Third Reading on Monday.

Hurrah!—two of the Bills of the Session past the talking stage !
Daylight at last!

Friday (Lords).—-Of course the Foreign Office was glad to publish
Colonel Mansfield's dispatches, showing how Russia converts
Greek Uniates by whipping and cell imprisonment, altogether very
much as Maey converted Protestants to the true Church. Foreign
Office takes a particular pleasure just now in slapping Russia in
the face, and Society enjoys the slap. Loed Houghton isn't sur-
prised. It is only pretty Russia's way. That is why the Catholic
Church, like the Jews, wishes God speed to the Turks. Loed Stanley
of Aldeeley wants Loed Geanville's answers to Colonel Mans-
field's dispatches. But this is too much for Loed Deeby. We
may lecture Turks, though we musn't coerce them. But we must
not interfere with Russia's internal administration, though we may
slap her in the face, and tell her she's a big, blustering, equivo-
cating bully, whom we decline to believe on her oath.

It is not true (see the Maequis of Salisbuey's answer to the Duke
of Aegyll) that we have quarrelled, or mean to quarrel—if we can
help it—with the Ameers of Afghanistan or Cabul, or that we are
making preparations which savour of war on our North-western fron-
tier. All such reports are, in fact, " shaves "—the growth of Indian
gossip in private letters. Indian officials will gossip, but Govern-
ment is trying to break them of the habit.

Loed Laweence didn't doubt all was right m Central Asia, but
wished he could believe that the rumour of difficulties with the
Ameers of Afghanistan were, as Loed Salisbuey seemed to think, a
mere delusion. . ,

(Commons).—Quite an Irish night's entertainment, what with
Paenell's notices of motion on Irish Church temporalities, Dublin
Rate Collections, and the murder of Sergeant Beett ; Me. Geay
on Constable Maloney, and the Phcenix Park Canteen Fund; and
Captain O'Bieene on the state of the Ballinamore Canal, to begin
with. Then—to balance this intolerable quantity of Irish sack—a