ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.
Tuesday, October 16th.—To Mr. Punch's blunt inquiry, "Why?" in last week's cartoon different answers would, I suppose, be returned by various Members. The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER would say that the reassembling of Parliament was necessary in order that he might obtain a further Vote of Credit from the representatives of the taxpayers. Brigadier-General PAGE CROFT, inventor and C.-in-C. of the new "National" party, who has already attached to himself a following not inferior numerically to the little band which, under Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL in the eighties, struck terror into the hearts of the Front Benches, longs to prove that, under his brilliant leadership, Lord DUNCANNON, Sir RICHARD COOPER and Major ROWLAND HUNT will emulate the early prowess of Sir JOHN GORST, Sir HENRY DRUMMOND-WOLFF and Mr. ARTHUR BALFOUR.
But a word to the gallant General: he will do little until he has secured a corner-seat. By hook or by crook Mr. HOUSTON, "the Pirate King," must be induced or compelled to surrender his coign of vantage to the new generalissimo, who will then be able alternately to pour a broadside into the Government or to enfilade the ex-Ministers who aid and abet them.
Then there are those humanized notes of interrogation like Mr. KING, Mr. HOGGE and Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING. They would like Parliament to be in permanent session in order that the world might have the daily benefit of their searching investigations. Mr. KING has not yet quite run into his best form. He had only six Questions on the Paper, and actually asked only five of them—a concession which so paralysed the MINISTER OF RECONSTRUCTION, to whom the missing Question was addressed, that, when asked where his department was located, he had to confess that he did not know the precise number, but it was somewhere in Queen Anne's Gate.
Eclipsed in Ireland by the more spectacular attractions of Sinn Fein, the Nationalists' only hope of recovering their lost popularity is to kick up the dust of St. Stephen's. Accordingly Mr. REDMOND gave notice of yet another Vote of Censure on the Irish Executive, but whether for its slackness or its brutality the terms of his motion do not make quite clear. Perhaps he has not yet made up his own mind on the subject.
I feel sure that Mr. MONTAGU has a sense of humour, and I admired the way in which he concealed its existence when explaining the Indian Government's release of Mrs. BESANT. As he read the VICEROY'S reference to "the tranquillizing effect of Mr. MONTAGU'S approaching visit" the House rippled with laughter; and when he proceeded to say that Mrs. BESANT had undertaken to use her influence to secure "a calm atmosphere for my visit," the ripple became a wave. But with the stoicism of the unchanging East he read on unmoved.
Mr. KENNEDY JONES, taking up the rôle of the newsboy in a recent cartoon, invited the Government to give the Germans the monosyllabic equivalent for a very warm time. Mr. BONAR LAW declined to commit himself to the actual term, but announced the intention to set up a new Air Ministry, and to "employ our machines over German towns so far as military needs render us free to take such action."
To return to Mr. Punch's question, "Why?" I think the answer most Members would make would be, "Because we wanted to see what the Ladies' Gallery would look like without the grille." It must be confessed that those who cherished visions of a dull assembly made glorious by flashing eyes, white arms, and brilliant dresses were disappointed.
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,"
wrote LOVELACE. Well, the iron bars have gone, but the stone walls remain, and make, if not a prison, something very like a purdah; and the "angels alone that soar above" are almost as much cut off from the inferior beings below them as they were before Sir ALFRED MOND came to the rescue of Beauty in thrall. He is rather disappointed at getting so little change out of his "fiver."
Wednesday, October 17th.—The latest recruit to what JOHN KNOX would have called the "monstrous regiment of Ministers" is Mr. WARDLE, lately Chairman of the Labour Party. He made a promising début. Mr. HOGGE professed to be anxious as to the future of the North-Eastern Railway, which, according to him, had lent all its "genii" to the Admiralty. Mr. WARDLE, quick to note the classical accuracy of the plural, assured him that he need be under no apprehensions—"there are still some genii left."
Ireland is to have the extended franchise conferred by the Representation of the People Bill, but not the accompanying redistribution of seats. The Chairman suggested that Sir JOHN LONSDALE, who wanted to do away with the anomaly, should move a supplementary schedule embodying his own ideas of how Ireland should be redistributed. Unfortunately—for one would have liked to see how much was left for the other three provinces after he had designed an Ulster commensurate with his notion of its relative importance—the hon. Baronet demurred to this tempting proposal, and thought it was a matter for the Government.
Some very pleasant badinage between Lord HUGH CECIL and the HOME SECRETARY as to the relative merits of the words "dwell" and "reside" for the purpose of defining a voter's qualification was followed by an exhaustive and exhausting lecture by Major CHAPPLE on how to tabulate the alternative votes in a three-cornered election. His object was to demonstrate that under the Government scheme the man whom the majority of the voters might desire would infallibly be rejected, while by a plan of his own, which he had tried successfully on a couple of wounded soldiers, the best man invariably won.
Thursday, October 18th.—The most obliging of men, Sir ALFRED MOND nevertheless draws the line when he is asked to look a gift horse in the mouth. His predecessor at the Office of Works having offered a site for a statue of President LINCOLN, it is not for him to challenge the artistic merit of the sculpture, which has been picturesquely described as "a tramp with the colic." It is thought that the American donors, after an exhaustive study of our outdoor monuments, have been anxious to conform to British standards of taste.
The "Nationals" are beginning to move. Their General elicited from the Government a promise to introduce a Vote of Thanks to His Majesty's Forces; though it is possible that this would have been done without his intervention. His lieutenants were less successful. Sir RICHARD COOPER could not persuade Mr. BONAR LAW to publish the official report on the loss of the Hampshire, and is now more than ever convinced that K. OF K. is languishing in a German prison-camp; while the HOME SECRETARY intimated that he required no instruction from Major ROWLAND HUNT in the business of suppressing seditious literature.
After all, Ireland is to be redistributed. Unless the success of the Convention renders the task superfluous, the Government will appoint a Boundary Commission as an act of simple justice. Needless to say the announcement was received with frenzied abuse by all the Nationalist factions. Abstract justice, it seems, is the very last thing that Ireland wants.
