Punch: Punch (75.1878)

THE IMPORTANCE OF EXTERNALS.

"Yes"—(thought Miss Pinkerton, as she gazed at Laura, sketching)—"I don't know how or why it should be so, but a Pince-nez

is more becoming than spectacles ; and I will get one myself."

fact, so that he feels as if he had scarcely yet come to from the
shock.

It was officially communicated hy the President of the Council
in the Lords, and by the Home Secretary in the Commons, in
his Leader's absence—Sir Stafford, Punch is sorry to learn,
having broken his head by sudden contact with a window-frame—
not a stone wall. This is the Essence of Parliament for the week
—Essence strong enough to make John Bull wink again, if not
to take his breath away.

As yet the news has been enough for Parliament. Comment on it
we have had none. It wants turning over and over, and looking at
all round. Punch, like Parliament, is content for the present to
ruminate on the responsibility which has been thus startlingly flung
upon Britannia's shoulders. She will hardly repudiate it. She
may rejoice in it—wisely, perhaps; perhaps "not wisely, but too
well." But she has first to measure it. Query if she can—if all
her Collective Wisdom, her Punch and her Parliament together, can
measure it for her.

Even the Crfmirial Code, big fact and great achievement as it
is—for the Code of Stephen may be destined hereafter to affect
British destinies more than that of Ban Stefano—seems a small matter
for the moment by the side of the Anglo-Turkish Treaty. Punch
is glad to learn from the Lord Chancellor that this excellent piece
of work is not to be " rushed" through the House in the dog-
days, among hurried estimates, expiring innocents, and huddled-up
arrears, but that the Code is to be closely sat upon through the four
winter months by Minos, jEacus and Rhadamanthus, in the persons
of Justices Blackburn, Lush, and Sir James Stephen himself, its
parent, who will see to the stopping of all holes, pohshing of all
roughnesses, and removing all blemishes, and so sending back, for the
Collective Wisdom to pass, what the selective wisdom of as competent
a three as England can supply, has made, meditated, and mended.

Punch takes off his cap and bells to Sir James Stephen—Proto-
mender, and not also, strange to say, as yet, Proto-martyr, of our
CTiminal Law. He may well take off the cap of folly to him who
has put the cap of wisdom on old Father Antic, the Law. Codifi-
cation alone would have been such a cap, but this is Codification
with Amendment.

This disposed of, my Lords, with that beautiful adaptation to maxi-
ma and minima which we admire in the trunk of the elephant, passed
from the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty and the Criminal Code to the
gravel in Rotten Row, and had a pleasant canter over that familiar
ground, on which the Duke of Rutland is much exercised.

(Commons.)— After the startling news,of our Defensive Alliance
with the Ottoman, and,our impending occupation of Cyprus—Sir
Garnet Wolseley is to be our Othello in the "warlike isle"—
the House worked off its excitement on the Cattle Bill, which it
discussed again on going into Committee. Government has sur-
rendered its first bastion ; it gives up the hard and fast slaughter of
cattle from Spain, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, opening
a door of discretion to the Privy Council, but only opening it ajar.
The Council may admit the cattle from these countries on bemg satis-
fied that disease does not exist in them, and that regulations exist
giving a guarantee that it will not be imported. If it does not exist,
such regulations—it strikes Punch—would be superfluous.^

Mr. Forster is not satisfied with the concession, nor is Punch,
though it is better than nothing. But the Bill is a bad Bill—illogi-
cal, ineffective for its alleged purpose, and really supported by those
who urge it most hotly, on other and lower grounds than they avow.

Tuesday (Lords).—The President of the Council can't or won't say
if the Anglo-Ottoman Treaty has been communicated to the other
Powers.

(Commons.)—Mr. Baring—Mr. Bourke told Mr. Forster—has
started for Cyprus, with the Sultan's firman making over the
island to Great Britain.

Morning spent on the Highways—this is weather for outdoor
airings—and Evening with Mr. Errington, in a thin House, over
the Irish Land Act of 1870, which he insists has not worked well.
Mr. Lowther said he never thought it would. No more did Go-
vernment. But they weren't going to repair the mistakes of tha
other side. Besides, inquiry would reopen agitation. Better remedy
the evils of Irish tenure than stereotype them by giving fixity of
occupation, which Major Nolan avowed was what the Irish tenants
wanted. He says the Irish tenant will never be satisfied till he is
" rooted in the soil"—in other words, till the Irish landlord i3 rooted
out.