'Us to blame? That's a capital notion! Drat them and their
"statutes" and "digests"!
"Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly
jests.
Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on that lay perniskers
There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein'
their wiskers,
Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar—it's mighty obliging—defines
'em,
The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties read Circ'lars as signs
'em,
If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin',
And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that DILKE and his long-winded
myrmidon OWEN.
The public's got Slums on the brain, and with sanitry bunkum's have
busted.
We make a more wigorous use of the powers with which we're
entrusted!
Wy, if we are at it all day with their drains, ashpits, roofs, walls,
and windies,
Wot time shall we 'ave for our feeds and our little porochial
shindies!
And all for the 'labouring classes'—the greediest, ongratefullest
beggars.
I tell you these Radical lot and their rubbishy littery eggers,
Who talk of neglected old brooms, and would 'ave us turn to at their
handles,
Are Noosances wus than bad smells and the rest o' their sanitry
"scandals."'
Sir Charles's main object in local government was to decentralize, and he sought to move in this direction by stimulating the exercise of existing powers and the habit of responsibility in local popularly elected bodies. But inquiry was also necessary.
'On February 8th, 1884, it had been decided to appoint a Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, and Mr. Gladstone had expressed his wish that I should be chairman of the Commission, on which the Prince of Wales desired to serve.'
'On the 9th it was settled that Bodley, my secretary, should be secretary to the Royal Commission. I immediately wrote to Manning to ask him to serve, and he consented on February 12th.'
Lord Salisbury's name lent another distinction to the list, which was
completed by February 16th. [Footnote: In addition to the Prince, the
Cardinal, and Lord Salisbury, Dilke's Commission consisted of Lord
Brownlow, Lord Carrington, Mr. Goschen, Sir Richard Cross, the Bishop of
Bedford (Dr. Walsham How), Mr. E. Lyulph Stanley, Mr. McCullagh Torrens,
Mr. Broadhurst, Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr. George Godwin, and Mr. Samuel
Morley. To these were added later Mr. Dwyer Gray and Sir George
Harrison, for Ireland and Scotland respectively.]
'A very difficult question arose about his precedence. I referred it to the Prince of Wales, who said that he thought Manning ought to take precedence, as a Prince, after Princes of the Blood, and before Lord Salisbury.'
The nice question was referred to Lord Salisbury and to many other authorities, and finally to Lord Sydney, who wrote, from the Board of Green Cloth, 'that in 1849, at the Queen's Levee at Dublin Castle, the Roman Catholic Primate followed the Protestant Archbishop, but he was not a Cardinal. A fortiori I presume a Cardinal as a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire would have precedence next to the Prince of Wales. It showed, however, extraordinary ignorance on the part of the Lord Steward to suppose that the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal Court were the same thing.' [Footnote: The story of how the question of precedence was settled in Manning's favour is given in detail in Mr. Bodley's Cardinal Manning, and Other Essays (1912).]
'It was on February 12th that I received Sir Henry Ponsonby's letter
announcing the approval of the Queen to the Prince serving on the
Commission as an ordinary member under my chairmanship, and the
Prince of Wales expressed his pleasure at the Queen's approval.'
'On February 22nd the members of the Cabinet present (at a meeting at the Foreign Office) discussed my proposal to put Miss Octavia Hill on my Royal Commission, no woman having ever sat on one; and Harcourt having refused to sign the Commission if it contained a woman's name, Mr. Gladstone, Kimberley, and Northbrook sided with me, and Hartington with Harcourt. Lord Granville said that he was with me on the principle, but against me on the person. After this Mr. Gladstone went round, and said that the decision of the Cabinet was against me. Asquith put several women on a Royal Commission a few years later, but refused them the precedence to which they were entitled, and gave every male member precedence before them.'
Mr. Lyulph Stanley was included to represent his sister, Miss Maude
Stanley, whom Sir Charles Dilke had wished to appoint.