“TOO MUCH OF A RAILWAY-MAN.”
People who consider that the Minister of Transport is too much of “a railway man” will, I fear, be confirmed in their belief. In his opinion the practice of the Companies in refusing a refund to the season ticket-holder who has left his ticket behind and has been compelled to pay his fare is “entirely justifiable.” He objected, however, to Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke’s interpretation of this answer as meaning that it was the policy of H.M. Government “to rob honest people,” so there may be hope for him yet.
It is wrong to suppose that the class generally known as “Young Egypt” is solely responsible for the anti-British agitation in the Protectorate. Among a long list of deportees mentioned by Lieut.-Colonel Malone, and subsequently referred to by Mr. Harmsworth as “the principal organisers and leaders of the disturbances” in that country, appeared the name of “Mahmoud Pasha Suliman, aged ninety-eight years.”
THE SPRING-CLEANING (INDEMNITY) BILL.
The process of cleaning-up after the War involves an Indemnity Bill. Sir Ernest Pollock admitted that there was “some complexity” in the measure, and did not entirely succeed in unravelling it in the course of a speech lasting an hour and a half. His chief argument was that, unless it passed, the country might be let in for an additional expenditure of seven or eight hundred millions in settling the claims of persons whose goods had been commandeered. An item of two million pounds for tinned salmon will give some notion of the interests involved and incidentally of the taste of the British Army.
“L’ÉTAT C’EST MOI.”
Lawyers and laymen vied with one another in condemning the Bill. Mr. Rae, as one who had suffered much from requisitioners, complained that their motto appeared to be L’état c’est moi. Sir Gordon Hewart, in mitigation of the charge that there never had been such an Indemnity Bill, pointed out that there never had been such a War. The Second Reading was ultimately carried upon the Government’s undertaking to refer the Bill to a Select Committee, from which, if faithfully reflecting the opinion of the House, it is conjectured that the measure will return in such a shape that its own draftsman won’t know it.
Tuesday, May 4th.—The Matrimonial Causes Bill continues to drag its slow length along in the House of Lords. Its ecclesiastical opponents are gradually being driven from trench to trench, but are still full of fight. The Archbishop of Canterbury very nearly carried a new clause providing that it should not be lawful to celebrate in any church or chapel of the Church of England the marriage of a person, whether innocent or guilty, whose previous union had been dissolved under the provisions of the Bill. His most reverend brother of York spoke darkly of Disestablishment if the clause were lost, and eleven Bishops voted in its favour, but the Non-Contents defeated it by 51 to 50.