PUNCH'S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT. • SAMBOURNE AILWAY Companies, if LORD REDESDALE had his way (Monday, Feb.21), would be bound by Act of Parliament for ever to carry three classes of passengers, because they have done so for thirty years past. LORD CARLINGFORD, like Punch and most sensible people, can't see why, if Companies choose to give first-class accommodation for second or even thirdclass fare, they should not be free to do so. But LORD REDESDALE so loves the rule stare super antiquas vias, he would extend it to Railways. Probably he has no love for them at best. We fear they are democratic inventions-levellers socially as well as mechanically, bringing dukes and ditchers under the same iron rules. LORD JOHN MANNERS, who has been proving that if "Manners makyth man," he can unmake men of letters, explained that his late dismissal of five letter-sorters was not for Oliver Twist's offence of "asking for more," but for allying themselves with professional agitators out of doors, and fomenting agitation within. Firebrands can't be tolerated in the Post-Office, the contents of which are eminently combustible, particularly when brought in contact with the non-contents. LORD JOHN is not a likely man to be harsh or hasty, and we should think the odds are that any punishment he inflicts has been well earned. MR. WAIT asked the question England has waited to have answered, whether the Admiralty had refused LADY FRANKLIN'S prayer to have her gallant husband's last representative and nephew, an officer of pith and promise, appointed as sub-lieutenant to the Arctic expedition-the only favour she ever asked of Government. MR. WARD-HUNT pleads guilty. It was decided that only two sub-lieutenants should be appointed. Great care was taken to choose the fittest of the forty-four who volunteered. It was impossible, for such a service, to let sentiment prevail over other considerations. Had there been more sublieutenants, LIEUTENANT FRANKLIN would have been chosen. Now it ought not to be necessary to remind MR. WARD-HUNT that there is such a thing as "natural selection." It pointed to LIEUTENANT FRANKLIN. From a good, by such a plea on his behalf he became the best, man for the work. Sentiment should have been allowed to prevail-even to the extent of appointing a third sub-lieutenant, if necessary. What harder slap in the face to English good-feeling could the late Government, so abused for subordination of sentiment to service, have inflicted? So like LowE-or AYRTON," people would have said. Let us hope MR. WARD-HUNT has not heard the last of it. Officers who want to shirk the disagreeables, say of Indian service, are in the habit of exchanging with those in whose eyes Indian pros, in the shape of extra pay and allowances, outbalance the cons. The War Office must now approve, not only of such exchanges, but the terms of them; and the money that passes between the exchangers is at present limited to actual expenses. MR. HARDY moved the Second Reading of a Bill to put the money-part of the transaction out of War Office ken, leaving the barterers free to settle their own terms. The change has the strong and unanimous recommendation of LORD CARDWELL'S Purchase Commission, including LORD JUSTICE JAMES and LORD PENZANCE. MR. TREVELYAN thinks so, and MR. LOWE, and both spoke their minds strongly. It is a natural suspicion, and Punch feels with them a spontaneous horror of again admitting Purse-thrust out with such difficulty, and at a cost of seven millions-into the field of Promotion. Is the attempt but one more proof of the melancholy truth-Nummos expellas furca, tamen usque recurrent? But it is the poor man who will profit by the change, and who prays for it. There seems no question of that. If Doctors differ, it is not the Military Doctors. They are all for the Bill. It is the Civil Doctors who shake their heads at it. The weight of evidence seems against them. The report is very decided, and comes from men with a stronger bias against Purchase than for it. It is difficult to resist conclusions thus strenuously pressed : "It has been repeatedly and forcibly urged upon us that the prohibition of paying and receiving money for exchanges between officers on full pay is a serious hardship to some and a serious loss to others. It does appear to us that the complaint is a legitimate one. The new rule has obviously proceeded from an apprehension that to allow any pecuniary bargaining between officers in respect of their commissions might be as a letting out of the waters, bringing back bonuses, over-regulation prices, and the other incidents of the abolished system. We are not satisfied that there is any real danger of this, and we are satisfied, on the evidence before us, that a return to the old practice as to exchanges would be very acceptable to the Army. There are many good officers of slender means who would be willing to serve in India or elsewhere for a consideration, and there are many good officers, more blessed with the world's goods, who for family or other reasons, or under medical advice, would be willing to give such a consideration. The exchange is an unmixed benefit to both, and would probably be a benefit, and certainly would not be detrimental, to the Service. It ought only to be effected with the sanction and under the control of the authorities, and on such conditions as to insure that nobody else is superseded or affected." So guarded, there seems more doctrinarianism than statesmanship in setting one's teeth against the Bill, though Punch owns it with reluctance. His heart is, with TREVELYAN and LowE, all for keep ing money-bags out of barracks, even when it is for the poor man's behoof that they are untied. The House carried the Second Reading -282 to 185-after the best debate of the Session. Perhaps our cynics may add, "and bad is the best." Tuesday.-LORD LYTTELTON's Bill for more Bishops-but to be supported, like the Hospitals, by voluntary contributions, and only to take their turns in the House of Lords, there being no room, we infer, on the Episcopal Bench, or the temporal Peers not admitting of more spiritual infusion, without being "the worse for it.' There was a very touching chorus from the poor fagged-out soulgardeners, to the tune of "We've too much work to do." Certainly the Church wants more governing in its present turbulence of high spirits; and there seem good reasons for giving it more governors, if only they are chosen of the right sort-more FRASERS, in fact, which in Episcopal classification stands for active doers' as contra-distinguished from tall talkers. All the more, as the new Bishop's bread is not to be sliced off the clerical loaf-none too large. Punch remembers WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR's short scheme of Church Reform, once propounded in the Combination Room of Trinity, to the consternation of some 'grave and reverend Seniors, and the delight of others, "Give every Bishop £500 a-year, and make it death for him to leave his Diocese." We haven't quite got to that yet, in spite of the Liberation Society. SIMON wants a Select Committee on the working of the Election In the Commons, a light and lazy afternoon. MR. SERJEANT Petitions' Act of 1868. At present the upshot of our legislation seems to be that the honestest of candidates may be swamped in a pint of beer; and that you have only to secure a thirsty voter, and somebody to stand a pot for him, to vitiate a return. What it will grant SIR HENRY JAMES his, on some late operations in the The Government will grant SERJEANT SIMON his Committee. So foreign loan-market. SIR HENRY's recent oil-well experience seems to have led him into rich City diggings. He has certainly "struck oil" in the Costa Rica and Honduras loans. They may well call it Costa Rica-after the British millions it has absorbed. a man SEÑOR GUTIERREZ must be for financing! Perhaps he is a sleeping partner in the Lombard Street house of--. But we must respect the incognito. Only, who can help taking off his hat to a genius who has bled JOHN BULL to the tune of five millions, and with a revenue of £100,000 pour tout potage, and who financed the was within an ace of drawing £12,000,000 more, for Honduras, Costa Rica loan of two millions, on security even more shadowy than that of Honduras. But while regretting the loss of SEÑOR GUTIERREZ to our own financing world, it is not to be denied that he has done a very pretty stroke of business as it is. LORD DERBY sees no objection to giving SIR HENRY his Committee. We should not have thought the solubility of the bond between fools and their money needed further illustration; or that any revelation is likely to make it less soluble. But Select Committees seem the order of the day. Why does not SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ask for one to inquire into the circumstances under which wasps flock to peaches, and flesh-flies to carrion? Wednesday.-Bank Holidays are to be extended to the Custom House. We presume the Customs do not feel themselves "more honoured in the breach than the observance" of that wholesome statute. The more holiday-makers the merrier, says Punch. Thursday,-THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH moved the Second Reading of his Church Patronage Bill Put down the exchange of your living and my money- The Bishop's Bill is eminently well-intentioned, and will, we fear, only serve for the payement of the place where good intentions go. The Committee they gave him last Session would not back up the absolute prohibition of the sale of next presentations, and finding that the simoniacal serpent can be only scotched, not killed, the Bishop is fain to be content with a Bill to diminish certain scandals in that sale of souls, of which the BISHOP OF EXETER painted a powerful, but not too sombre picture. Hear the Vox Templi ... "Their Lordships generally could not possibly understand the extent of the evil as he and his Right Reverend brethren did, who were constantly meeting with persons in the lower classes, and hearing what they felt on such a matter as this. It was constant matter of conversation among such people. They felt it to be a kind of personal degradation that those institutions should be made the subject of bargain and sale, and they were taunted with it by those who did not belong to their own communion. The Nonconformist shopman taunted the Churchman in the market with the fact that the parish to which he belonged had been sold over his head, and that he had to accept the parson who had bought the place with his money. He entirely admitted that good men were brought into the Church here and there, but the gross evil and scandal of the sale would be seen when it was considered what a man sold who sold a living. He sold one of the most important trusts which it was possible for a man to hold. Upon him depended whether there should be in the parish a good man, a judicious man, a devoted man, a really religious man; or, on the other hand, an idle man, a careless man, an irreverent man, a man with a bad temper, a man with no heart in his work.... And was there care taken that the person to whom it was to be handed over was a fit person to exercise it? No. That was entirely left to the solicitor, whose duty it was to make the best bargain he could."" Punch bids the Bishop's Bill all success, but with more good wishes than good hopes. Only this prophecy he ventures-Either the Sale of Souls must go, or the Church of England. It is coming to that. On the Friendly Societies Bill Doctors differ. DOCTOR CAMERON, Member for Glasgow, able man, and member of the Friendly Societies Select Committee, thinks the Bill a hollow mockery, and moves it be read this day six months. MR. LOWE agrees with him. MR. COWEN (Newcastle-on-Tyne Democrat) declares, in the teeth of the Doctor, that the Bill is a good Bill, and just what the Societies' Officers want. Very probably, but is it what the members want? The truth is the Bill is an attempt to find a locus sedendi between two stools. Its framers want to secure the Societies against roguish managers and rotten tables of rates; but they daren't take the bull by the horns, by compelling a Government audit. Nor, probably, would the Societies submit to it. They prefer their liberty, with all its risks of rogues and rottenness. This being so, what can the Bill be but a half-and-half measure? JOHN BULL likes half-andhalf. Friday.-LORD GRANVILLE thinks there ought to be no patentlaw, and so does LORD HATHERLEY. Inventors think otherwise. Punch, on such a point, prefers the opinion of the brain-workers. LORD CAIRNS, who knows more of the Patent Law and its working than LORD GRANVILLE, is of their way of thinking. But this Bill for its reform wants a good deal of tinkering. MR. MARTIN tried hard, with that touching simplicity and good faith which take all the venom out of his rabies, to prove that JOHN MITCHEL was not fairly condemned, though he gloried in his treason, because the Government did not try him by a jury certain to acquit, and that the English Government was at the bottom of the potato disease and the Irish famine. He seems really to believe so, this poor dear JoHN. A MASON WHO BUILDS WELL. I HAVE been young, and now am old: and yet Next, on the day which ends my eightieth year, MR. PUNCH (loquitur). Hail to you, Nestor of your Town, JOSIAH! And though he drinks from gold, in victories won, To imitate the generous acts of MASON, dals, and rank for means to lay by for age, and provide for their families. WHAT SOME MA- their brass scabbards and gilt spurs for the enthusiasm of a Subaltern. To exchange their dignified but vague superintendence of a halfbattalion for real hard work. To exchange their showy rank for the responsible autocracy of the Colonel of a Regiment, or the pleasant independence of the Captain of a Company. WHAT SOME CAPTAINS WOULD LIKE. To exchange the system of "Confidential Reports" for open, above-board accusations. To exchange the smoky, stuffy, twenty-four hours of guard duty, for billiard-room S. and B., or barrack-room bitter and bacca. To exchange the Purgatory of garrison life for the Paradise of a comfortable Staff appointment. WHAT SOME SUBALTERNS WOULD LIKE. To exchange the mechanical duty of inspecting raw beef and halfstewed mutton for the dolce far niente of the smoking-room at the Rag. To exchange a profitless Parade for Squad Drill, or the Musketry Exercise, for a game of Polo or a Croquet flirtation at the Vicar's. To exchange the weariness of single-blessedness and the independence of the mess-room for the too often imaginary double-blessedness of marriage with a garrison belle. WHAT MR. JOHN BULL WOULD LIKE. To exchange a paper Force, commanded by Officers all good men and true but all more or less smarting under grievances, and composed of a Rank and File with about as many deserters as recruiters -for a really efficient and contented British Army. |