Punch,  50 (1866), 110–11.

Punch's Essence of Parliament

Anon

Genre:

Regular Feature, Proceedings, Drollery

Subjects:

Government, Politics, Military Technology, Nationalism, Cultural Geography, Light, Measurement, Instruments, Industry, Pollution, Railways, Transport, Animal Husbandry, Disease, Religious Authority, Religion, Miracle, Supernaturalism, Scientific Practitioners


    Describes the speech of Spencer C Cavendish (Marquess of Hartington) on the Army estimates in which he revealed that 'the Army thinks best of the Armstrong gun, and the Navy of the Whitworths' and that neither Britain nor France had 'arrived at a breech-loading rifle'. Notes that the 'Corporation Gas Bill' was referred to a committee and criticises the fact that the 'howl' made about 'breach of faith with the existing gangs of gas-makers' showed misplaced sentimentality 'over a gasometer'. Later notes the defeat of the 'Mid-London Railway Bill', Edward H Stanley (Lord Stanley) advising that first 'we ought to wait and see what the Inner Circle [...] would do for us'. Describes the passage of George W Hunt's 'Cattle Plague Bill' through the House of Lords, the argument of Edward Law (Earl of Ellenborough) that 'we should never get rid of this plague until we got rid of the plague of Professors who professed to cure it', and the disagreement between the government and clergymen over the need for a fast day to hasten the end of the rinderpest. (110) Later discusses Thomas Hughes's unsuccessful 'proposals for compelling Railway Companies to provide houses for the working men whom they ejected' and Robert Peel's 'elaborate speech against Coal Smoke' (111).



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