Punch (74.1878)

March 23, 1878.] PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVAKI. 1M

NOT VERY LIKELY.

Cabby (who has been paid his bare fare before hiring). " Bring yer Box in ? What, I leave my young 'Oss a stamjin' 'ere
of hissele ! "—(With determination.)—"No, I can't leave my Cab 1 Spozin' he runs away, 'oos io Pay for the Damage, I

should like to know !"

In Supply on the Naval Estimates, Mr. Hermon spoke the mind
of a practical man of business on the uselessness and cost of the
returns which Honourable Members are always moving for, and which
generally end, as returns are apt to end, in smoke. In nineteen cases
out of twenty they serve no end but to help the department to waste
time,"and the Stationery Office to waste-paper, at best to wrap up
some crotchet that is not worth the cost of printing, to say nothing
of the cost of clerks' time in compiling them. There ought to be an
examiner ;of returns to see that none are sanctioned without some
better prospect of return than a weight of waste-paper, which
overwhelms Honourable Members, and benefits nobody but the
butterman.

Then Mr. Seely opened fire on the Admiralty from the cellars
to the attics, assailing all that is done, and all that is left undone
therein, and declaring English Naval Administration miserably in-
ferior to French. How with such Naval Lords Britannia still
dares to claim, or hopes to hold lordship of the sea, the next war
will show! Seely's bill of indictment was so crushing, that everybody
was at once set thinking—" This is really too bad to be true I "

Lord H. Lennox opened fire of the heaviest guns he could bring
to bear on the Inflexible, and said [ditto to Mr. Reed with great
spirit. Mr. Reed followed, on the same side, with heavier metal.
If words can sink a ship, the survival of the Inflexible is a miraole.
And if her unarmoured ends and cork stuffing can still float her,
after Mr. Reed's and Lord Henry's broadsides, Punch can only
say, " Bravo, Barnaby I "

Mr. Goschen returned Mr. Reed's fire, and took upon him the
whole responsibility of the Inflexible, whioh must, we would think,
be even heavier than the armour of her citadel. It would take
three hundred hitting shots to destroy her unarmoured ends. Have
Reed and Lennox together as many shots in the locker ? Punch
takes leave to doubt, and prefers backing the Inflexible to swim,
with Goschen, to backing her to turn .turtle, with Reed and
Lennox. Mr. Reed's Popoffka prophecies do not strengthen one's
faith in his Infallibility as Pope of the Naval Architectural
Church.

The Attorney-General introduced that old innocent— of many

Sessions' martyrdom—the Bankruptcy Bill. May Punch pray by
anticipation R.I.P. ?

Tuesday (Lords.)—With that perfection of reason which becomes
the law, our Divorce Legislation, while empowering the Court to
oompel an innocent husband.to provide for an adulterous wife, has
given no such power against a guilty one.

Lord Sudeley, the Lord Chancellor assenting, oarried Second
Reading of the Bill for amending this and other anomalies and ab-
surdities of our Divorce Acts, which has passed the Commons and
has the full approval of the Judges.

(Commons.)—A duel between Captain Nolan and Lord Eustace
Cecil, the gallant Captain armed with breech-loader, the noble
Lord with muzzle-loader, came off on the floor of the House, without
serious consequences. The systems, guns, and combatants, remain
as they were. Our professional authorities hold to their muzzle-
loaders, and if their opponents dare them to the deadly breech, they
are quite ready to meet them.

Then came on the Great Negroponte Correspondence incident,
opened by Mr. Evelyn Ashley, who moved the House to express its
regret at the conduct of a certain Ambassador in relation to certain
charges in a certain newspaper based on a certain correspondence
between a certain English statesman and a certain Greek politician
shown by a certain representative of a certain newspaper to said
certain Ambassador at a certain reception, and by him repeated to a
certain attache with a direction to mention it to a certain corre-
spondent of a certain other newspaper. There is one certain conclusion
to be deduced from this now thoroughly-ventilated bit of certain back-
stairs history—that if it is not desirable—however necessary some-
times—for our Ambassadors to communicate with the Government by
telegraph, it is pre-eminently undesirable for an Ambassador at Con-
stantinople, during the height of a Russo-Turkish war in the Ottoman
empire, and a Russophobe and Turkophile fever at home, to commu-
nicate either with his Government, or his country, by Daily Tele-
graph ;—and that, when he tells his attache, if he sees the corre-
spondent of the D. T., to give him.the Ambassador's impression of
a letter he has just seen, it is not an unnatural inference that the
Ambassador means the said Correspondent to make it the text