Punch: Punch (75.1878)

4

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[July 13, 1878.

its supporters are cleverly using this sale to the Globe of the
Salisbury-Schouvaloff agreement.

(Commons.)—After much desultory talk, in which the employment
of writers in the Foreign Office at tenpence an hour was mixed up
with the Indian Press Act, Cretan disturbances, Home-Harbour
Loans, Irish Arms-searches, and the appointments to the Halifax
Bench, the well thrashed Cattle Bill discussion was resumed, and all
the old reasons for and against it reiterated with that stolid indiffer-
ence to the weariness of the House and the exhaustion of the subject
which shows that a question has passed out of the range of reasoning
into that of parti pris.

Colonel Ruggles-Brise was a splendid specimen of the bucolic
Member in this stage of utter imperviousness to argument and in-
difference to infliction of all his tediousness upon his audience.

In the teeth of what Punch cannot but feel to be proof to demon-
stration of the impotence of the Bill to effect its professed object—of
keeping out foot-and-mouth disease—and the certainty of its restrict-
ing the import of cattle, and so raising the price of meat to the con-
sumer, the division gave the Government the overwhelming majority
of 157 in a House of 481. But till the Bill is through Committee,
we will not believe that the Government, even in all the might of its
majority, will venture to leave its most glaring defects unremedied.
Nous verrons.

Tuesday (Lords).—The Irish Intermediate Education Bill passed
through Committee, with cheers, Avithout a single Amendment or
alteration in clause or schedule. Let the amazing fact be noted ;
and let my Lord Cairns be duly congratulated thereon. Raise
Cairns to his honour of all the stones that have been flung at all be-
fore him who have attempted to deal with Irish Education. When our
Legislators do agree on an Irish measure, their unanimity is won-
derful. Can it be that the million of Established Church appro-
priation has done it all ? Suppose my Lord Cairns took heart of
grace and appropriated another million from the same source to
increase the salaries of the Irish National School Masters ? Surely
Irish National Education wants improving as much as Irish. Inter-
mediate ditto.

(Commons.) — The morning Sitting spent in debate on Scotch
Roads and Bridges—nice bracing exercise - ground for this hot
weather; and the evening on the less seasonable, and more unsavoury
subject of Irish Paupers Removal. It seems, on Mr. Macarthy

Doayxing's showing, that England is still too much addicted to the
practice of shifting her burden of out-worn Irish Pauperism on to
ould Ireland's maternal back, in spite of Ireland's natural enough
contention that where the Pauper has given his labour—while he
had it to give—he has established the best claim for maintenance
when he can work no longer. Till the good time shall come for
the utter abolition of the barbarous law of settlement—that relic
of a bad time, now, it is to be hoped, past away for ever—Mr.
Downing was fain to content himself with Mr. Sclater-Booth's
promise to employ all the power of the Local Government Board to
diminish cases of hardship in the removal of Irish Paupers back to
Ireland. The principal of "Ireland for the Irish" does not apply
to her Pauperism.

Wednesday.—No maniacs are more mischievous to themselves or
their families than dipsomaniacs. Dr. Dalrymple, one of the few
medical Members of the House, devoted himself to the task of Legis-
lation for the restraint of this peculiarly wretched class of lunatics;
and, in fact, sacrificed health and life in his labours to this end.

Dr. Cameron, another of the few doctors who leaven the Collective
Wisdom, has inherited Dr. Dalrymple's task, and has rendered it
easier by throwing over the more ambitious part of the Doctor's large
design, which aimed at providing asylums for dipsomania out of the
rates, and at giving compulsory powers for the confinement and re-
straint of dipsomaniacs. Dr. Cameron's Bill is confined (to volun-
tary and private machinery. Tipsy-lunatic Asylums may be
established at cost of individuals, to which dipsomaniacs, in their
lucid intervals, may commit themselves, or may be committed by
their friends, with due precautions taken against undue encroach-
ment on personal liberty ; and when once committed may be detained
for the time required to give a fair chance of cure. The worst
enemies of the Bill must admit its moderate and tentative character;
and as an experiment for the remedying of a grievous evil, which
can now only be dealt with by difficult and costly private arrange-
ments, every sensible person must wish it well, and will watch its
working with interest.

It should be called a '' Bill to prevent men from putting an enemy
into their mouths to steal away their brains."

Punch congratulates Dr. Cameron on the discretion he has shown
in handling a difficult subject, and on the favourable reception given
to his BiU.

CO-OPERATIVE WEDDING PRESENTS.

ourteous Mr. Punch,

What to do with
your cold mutton is one
of the most momentous
questions of the day;
and scarcely less dis-
tracting to the domestic
mind is the problem,
what to do with your
old wedding-presents P

I don't suppose the
givers of these gifts care
vastly Avhat becomes of
them. Still one can
hardly sell a present;
and, indeed, were there
no moral objection to the
sale, a purchaser might
seldom very readily be
found. Nor would it be
thought proper, to raise
„ money on such articles,

although so many wedding-gifts are by mishap made in duplicate,
that the pawn-shop seems to be their fitting destination, after they
have been displayed upon the nuptial day. I remember that
my wife and I together, when we married, were blest by loving
friends and relatives, with two egg-boilers, three cruet-stands, and
no fewer than five card-trays; and one of our first quarrels arose
from a debate as to which of these land presents we should keep for
times of ceremony, and which we should regard as meant for daily use.

Use ? Well, yes, there is some use in cruet-stands and egg-
boilers, and even in a card-tray there may be some social service,
especially to snoblings who catch some titled visitors, and are care-
ful to display their cards conspicuously atop. But wedding-gifts in
general are most expensive nicknacks of no possible utility, except,
perhaps, to furnish topics for small talkers, and, when displayed as
chimney-ornaments, to coUect and show the dust. Besides, it is
annoying, after giving Smith a card-tray on his marriage with
Miss J ones, to find that Brown and Robinson have each sent him
the same article, and that yours is clearly the least costly of s the
three. How much wiser it would be to join with Brown and
Robinson, and, if need be, White and Wilxtns, in making Smith

a present of a grand piano, say, or a handsome set of dinner-tables,
or some curtains for his drawing-room, or some carpets for his stairs.
Instead of thanking his kind friends for egg-boilers and card-trays,
and similar nicknackeries, many a man would gladly see his tailor's
bill receipted on his marriage, or find a bin of claret stocked for him,
or a ceUar filled with coals.

"Many can help one" is a rather common motto of the Artists
who paint landscapes and shipwrecks on the pavement, appropriately
interspersed with slices of pink salmon and delicate arrangements of
mackerel in pea-green. Were friends to club together, they might
furnish a man's house for him with the money they now waste in
buying useless wedding-gifts. Everybody knows what a bore it is to
have to choose a wedding-present, and how sure one_ always feels
that one has chosen just the thing which is most certain to be given
by everybody else. By clubbing, individuals might save themselves
this bother, and the dread of giving duplicates would be utterly
removed.. Both to givers and receivers, wedding-presents nowadays
are weights upon the mind ; and the bliss of happy couples might be
sensibly increased, were they no longer burthened with the care of
costly nicknacks, wherewith, as time progresses, they are puzzled
what to do.

My voice, then, is for gifts on the co-operative system, whereof
the wisdom must be evident without another Avord from

Yours most truly, Verbum Sap.

THE RESOLVE OF HELLAS.

With smooth speech and promise fair,
Rubbed the right way of the hair,
Bade " be a good little Greece,"
Hold my hand, and keep the peace,
Awaiting nice things by-and-by,—
British Lion's Greece was I.

Snubbed and sneered at, and abused;
Denied Epirus, Crete refused];
In my old cramped limits pent,
Blood spilt idly, money spent,
Now British faith is proved a lie,—
Muscovite Bear's"Greece am I.

Interesting to Poultry Fanciers.—Oxford's recent Exhibition
of "Duck's-eggs " at Lords and Fouls at Heniey.