Punch: Punch (78.1880)

130

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[March 20, 1880.

PUNCH’S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

but decimo die ante Kalendas Aprites.

The die is cast! The doom of Dissolution has fallen. But resur-
rection, strange to say, will precede death. On the 23rd of this
month the Parliament of 1874 will rise to sit no more. It was not
lovely in its life. In its death it will only he what it was in its life
—divided. Let us hope that in the division John Bull will do as
Hamlet recommends his mother—

“ Fling: away the worser half of it,

And live the purer with the other half.”

“ Not Caught yet ! ” (After Landseer ) The secret has been well kept. Except a whisper of cabs collared

a week ago in a big borough—bespeaking an eye to a poll—nothing
seems to have oozed out in betrayal of the Cabinet resolve. So it was like the bursting of a bombshell when, on Monday, March 8,
in the Lords, my Lord Beaconseield, as curtly as words could do it, and in the Commons the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with
Less economy of breath, announced that Government, having settled its Irish difficulties, got its Military and Naval Estimates passed,
and its Supply within reach of a vote on account, had come to the conclusion that Easter would be the pleasantest time to perform the
Hari-Kari, and April, month of smiles and tears, the fittest for fights big with the joy of victory, and the dumps of defeat.

So the writs will be out before the end of March, the “roaring month; ” by All Fools’ Day the country will be elbow-deep in
the mess and muddle of its Elections, and early in the merry month of May a brand-new Parliament will be at work with its new
broom, and perhaps—who knows?—a new set of hands, officers and petty officers, in charge of the good ship J3rita?mia !

The issue is in the hands of John Bull. Before May he will have to audit the accounts his servants render, and set his seal to
them by retention of his present stewards, or refuse it, by the appointment of new ones.

A difficult task it should be, seeing that, according to the organs to whose tunes we listen for the case of the Ins and Outs, if not
for the ins and outs of the case, the Opposition are the party, of decomposition, bent on dismembering the United Kingdom, putting
John Bull in the hole abroad and in Queer Stfeet at home; cutting the tow-rope of the Colonies; severing the consecrated ties of Church
and State; upsetting our most cherished institutions; throwing up the sponge in our quarrels, and generally eating dirt and hurnble-
pie in the face of the foreigner—while, on equally unimpeachable and unprej udiced authority, the Government have, for the last six
years, been doing everything they ought not to have done, and leaving undone everything they ought to have done ; missing their
tip in the East; drifting helplessly into war in Africa ; making ruin and letting loose anarchy in Afghanistansinging small or sounding
the wrong note in the European concert; and while breeding wars and fomenting disturbance in Europe, Asia, and Africa, neglecting