Remarkable Speech.
Owing to the ruthless condensation of the Parliamentary Reports in the daily Press, no mention was made of Mr. Alfred Dunstanley's motion last Thursday, under the ten-minutes rule, for leave to bring in his Bill for the Reform of Public Schools. That omission we are now able to make good, thanks to the enterprise of a correspondent who was present during the debate in the Strangers' Gallery.
Mr. Dunstanley remarked that he was not prompted by any animosity to our public schools and did not propose to exterminate or annihilate them. But he was convinced that in the best interests of the nation they ought to be purged of the excrescences and anomalies which militated against their utility. The Bill accordingly provided that, pending the extinction of the hereditary peerage, peers or peers' sons, if they insisted on going to public schools, should be carefully segregated and kept in a state of perpetual coventry. It was not advisable that the healthy sons of our democracy should associate with those effete and tainted aristocrats. The Bill stopped short of sending them to the lethal chamber, but recommended that they should pay triple fees.
Mr. Dunstanley explained that he had no feeling against titled persons as individuals. But the facts were against them. Thus the word viscount was in Latin vice-comes, in itself a terrible admission. Again, baronets were almost invariably depicted in lurid colours by the best novelists. In short their presence at our public schools could not be safely tolerated, as even the children of good Radicals were not immune to the danger of snobbery and sycophancy. The Bill also provided for compulsory vegetarian diet and the abolition of all cadet corps, rifle-shooting and caning.
Mr. Dunstanley concluded by observing that it pained him to bring forward this motion, as he had many friends who had been born in the purple, and some had survived the demoralising influences involved in their birth, but he felt it his solemn duty to lodge a practical protest against the fetish worship of rank and wealth and war, which, in the opinion of his great-headed colleague, Mr. John Ward, was ruining the country.
From a letter to The Accrington Gazette:—
"I do hope that the Accrington Town Council will read, mark, learn this epistle and lay these precepts to their hearts, which in Latin I will quote: 'Quod Hoc Sibi Vult.' It means that the exposed food stuffs will not only be impregnated with the volcanic like dust representing the cremated remnant of the town's horrible organic refuse, but will also be tainted with the smell that tastes."
Our contemporary's correspondent would have pleased our old Sixth Form Master, who was always complaining that our translations did not bring out the full meaning of the passage.
"Great Pictures under the Hammer."
The Times.
The Suffragettes continue to be busy.
"Who shall say howqztNj wodrmf."
Manchester Daily Dispatch.
Who wants to?
"And so you are really going to be married next month, my dear. Well, I think your future husband seems a charming man. By-the-by, what does he do?".
"Oh—er—well—er—d'you know, I really haven't had time to ask him; but I expect Papa could tell you if you particularly want to know."