Punch (74.1878)

242 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHAKIVARI. [June i, 1878.

those who set Parliament above Prerogative and trust the Consti- as he now takes up German, French., Latin, or Greek, it might be
tution more than the Cabinet may feel that the Constitution has well to make hopeless muffishness on horseback a disqualification
heen turned, if not trampled under foot, and a step taken which no for a Commission. Thus far the "War Office might wiselyy go to
Minister, since Lord North's days of high Prerogative, has dared to : meet Lord Hardinge.

attempt, and for which even Lord North asked the protection of an j {Commons.)— The Gladiatorial combat of Monday resumed. First
Act of Indemnity. Those who think thus have eased their consci- in the lists was that ablest of Intractables, Professor Fawcett,
ences by recording their protest against this ominous precedent. who, not seeing when he bores others, can defy the penalties oi
This has been the business of the week in Parliament. It has been boredom in the strength of an honest purpose, and now contended
a good fight well fought, and well worth fighting. My Lord Hah- with characteristic straightforwardness that Government had pur-
tington led the way gallantly, and like a good knight; and we are sued a policy of secresy and concealment which nothing could
bound to say was as knightly encountered by him I justify; had set Parliament at defiance, and deprived it of an

" Cbi sul suo scudo porta il fa go." opportunity of expressing its opinion; that if carried out to its

Tuesday {Lords).—A bad.".accouat from under water of the
Eur y dice. She_ is settling down in the mud, and seems likely to
stay there, getting heavier while she laughs lighters to scorn and
defies dockyard dummies, saying to the hawsers " haw, haw!" and
joggling herself out of toggles. Why essay to bring back Eurydice
from that lower res-ion where she rests with her brave dead—her
hull their fittest coffin ?

Lord HAKDiKGE is exercised with a sore fear that having eased
the Army of the incubus of athletic asses, we are going to hand it
over to the feeble officering of studious spoons, and asks that marks
may be given to athletics and horsemanship at Woolwich and Sand-
hurst examinations. Punch, a little further on, has helped him to
an examination paper. "Without exactly giving marks to steadiness
in the saddle or proficiency on the swinging trapeze, or requiring
a man to take up foot-ball, hurdle-jumping, cricket, or swimming,

logical consequences, this policy would degrade the House of Com-
mons into the mere registrar of the uncontrollable decrees of our
uncontrollable Government.

After Professor, Attorner-General. To Mr. Fawcett succeeded
Sir John Holker, cool, shallow, self-complacent, self-confident
legal brass, against obstinate, earnest, self-convinced conviction.
Sir John whittled away the Bill of Rights from a measure that de-
clared the Common Law of the realm into a measure that made a bit
of statute law, and did not make it well; pooh-poohed the Mutiny
Bill in its application to the impugned act of the Government; con-
tended that all that Parliament had to do with the matter was to
find the money ; and that if the Queen could move her troops where
she pleased in time of war, she could do the same in time of peace;
that " neither the Mutiny Act, the Bill of Rights, the Act for the
Government of India, nor the wonderful Constitutional principles