And this little pig stayed at home'?"
The Mother of Parliaments. "Yes, David, dear. Why do you mention it?"
David. "Oh, I was merely wondering what was to be done about it."
Abhorrence of the Government of Ireland Bill is the one subject on which all Irishmen appear to think alike. It is, no doubt, with the desire to preserve that unanimity that the Prime Minister announced his intention of pressing the measure forward after the Recess "with all possible despatch."
But before that date it looks as if Irishmen would have despatched one another. The little band of Nationalists had handed in a batch of private-notice Questions arising out of the disturbances in Belfast. Their description of them as the outcome of an organised attack upon Catholics was indignantly challenged by the Ulstermen, and the Speaker had hard work to maintain order. The contest was renewed on a motion for the adjournment. As a means of bringing peace to Ireland the debate was absolutely futile. But it enabled Mr. Devlin to fire off one of his tragical-comical orations, and Sir H. Greenwood to disclaim the accusation that he had treated the Irish problem with levity. "There is nothing light and airy about me," he declared; and no one who has heard his pronunciation of the word "Belfast" would doubt it.
Before and after this melancholy interlude good progress was made with the Finance Bill, and Mr. Chamberlain made several further concessions to the "family-man."
Tuesday, July 27th.—The Lords rejected the Health Resorts and Watering Places Bill under which local authorities could have raised a penny rate for advertising purposes. Lord Southwark's well-meant endeavour to support the Bill by reminding the House that Irish local authorities had enjoyed this power since 1909 was perhaps the proximate cause of its defeat, for it can hardly be said that the last few weeks have enhanced the reputation of Ireland as a health resort.
Mr. Harmsworth utterly confounded the critics of the Passport Office. Its staff may appear preposterously large and its methods unduly dilatory, but the fact remains that it is one of the few public departments that actually pays its way. Last year it spent thirty-seven thousand pounds and took ninety-one thousand pounds in fees. "See the world and help to pay for the War" should be the motto over its portals.
It is, of course, quite proper that soldiers who wreck the property of civilians—albeit under great provocation—should receive suitable punishment. But a sailor is hardly the man to press for it. Lieutenant-Commander Kenworthy received a much-needed lesson in etiquette when Major Jameson gravely urged, in his penetrating Scotch voice, that soldiers in Ireland should be ordered not to distract the prevailing peace and quiet of that country, but should keep to their proper function of acting as targets for Sinn Fein bullets.
Mr. Chamberlain dealt very gingerly with Sir Arthur Fell's inquiry as to whether "any ordinary individual can understand the forms now sent out by the Income Tax Department?" Fearing that if he replied in the affirmative he would be asked to solve some particularly abstruse conundrum, he contented himself with saying that the forms were complicated because the tax was complicated, and the tax was complicated because of the number and variety of the reliefs granted to the taxpayer. It does not seem to have occurred to him that it is the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make the tax simple as well as equitable. Is it conceivable that he can have forgotten Adam Smith's famous maxims on the subject, and particularly this: "The time of payment, the manner of payment, the quantity to be paid, ought all to be clear and plain to the contributor, and to every other person"?