The Ministry of Health Bill found Mr. DEVLIN in a dilemma. He makes it a rule never to support anything that emanates either from the House of Lords or from the Government. But on this occasion his two bêtes noirs were in opposition, for the Lords had decided that the new Minister should have but one Parliamentary Secretary, and the Government was determined to give him two. Whichever way he voted the Nationalist Leader was bound to do violence to his principles. And so, with that quick-wittedness for which his countrymen are justly renowned, he walked out without voting at all.
MR. DEVLIN.
Tuesday, May 27th.—It is odd that the House of Lords, which has done so much for the emancipation of women still refuses to allow peeresses in their own right to take part in its debates. They would have been very useful this afternoon, when two Bills affecting their sex were under discussion. An extraordinary amount of heat was developed by the Nurses Registration Bill, introduced by Lord GOSCHEN, and I am sure some of the charming ladies in the Strangers' Gallery must have been longing to produce their clinical thermometers and descend to the floor to take the temperatures of the disputants.
So far as one could gather, the Bill is the outcome of a quarrel between the College of Nurses and the rest of the profession. Who shall decide when nurses disagree?
In Committee on the Bill for enabling women to become Justices of the Peace Lord STRACHIE moved to restrict the privilege to those who have "attained the age of thirty years." The LORD CHANCELLOR strongly resisted the limitation on the ground that the Government are pledged to establish "equality between the sexes." He was supported by Lord BEAUCHAMP, who, however, thought it unlikely that any ladies under that age would in fact be appointed. I am not so sure. Who knows but that some day the Woolsack may be tenanted by a really susceptible Chancellor?
There are limits to the credulity of the House of Commons. Mr. BOTTOMLEY'S assertion that many clergymen did not know whether they might marry a woman to her deceased husband's brother, and had written to him for an authoritative opinion, only excited ribald laughter.
His inquiry whether the Recess could start three days earlier, in order that Members might take advantage of the Epsom carnival to study the social habits of the people and form an opinion as to the possibility of raising revenue from taxes on racing and betting, was in better vein, and reminded old Members of the days when Lord ELCHO (now Lord WEMYSS) used annually to delight the House with his views on the Derby adjournment. Entering into the spirit of the jest, Mr. BONAR LAW replied that he regretted that his honourable friend should be put to inconvenience, but he must do what we all have to do at times, and decide whether his duty lay at Epsom or Westminster. From Mr. BOTTOMLEY'S rejoinder one gathered that he had already made up his mind, and that Epsom had it.
Wednesday, May 28th.—Colonel WEDGWOOD'S complaint that aeroplanes were used to disperse rioters in India was ostensibly based on the fact that, like the gentle rain from heaven, bombs fell alike on the just and the unjust, but really, I fancy, on what I gather to be his rapidly-growing belief that any anarchist is preferable to any Government. Mr. MONTAGU, however, declined to interfere with the use of a weapon which for the moment has greatly strengthened the hands of the Indian Administration in dealing with disorder, whether on the frontiers or in the cities.
The Ministry of Labour has lately introduced a course of domestic training for "wives and fiancées." The indefiniteness of the latter term offended Captain LOSEBY, who wanted to know at what exact period of "walking-out" a lady became a fiancée. Mr. WARDLE, although the author of a work on "Problems of the Age," confessed that this one baffled him, and asked for notice.