Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893)O'Connor, T. P. (Thomas Power)
History
Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893)
O'Connor, T. P. (Thomas Power)
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901; Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons; Home rule -- Ireland
On June 18th, Mr. Bartley proposed an amendment to a restriction in the
Bill with regard to the establishment and endowment of any church. By
the Bill--as is pretty well known--the Irish Parliament are forbidden to
confer on any church the privilege of State establishment and State
endowment. To this restriction no Irish member has ever raised the least
objection. It was reserved for Mr. Bartley--one of the most vehement
opponents of Irish nationality and an Irish Parliament--to declare that
such a restriction would make the Parliament unworthy of the acceptance
of a nation of freemen, and to propose that accordingly it should be
removed. The position, then, in which the Irish opponents of the Bill
were placed, was this--that while denouncing the supremacy and
encroachments of the Catholic Church as one of the main objections
against the Bill, they proposed that the Irish Parliament should have
the right to establish and endow that very Church. Mr. Balfour
perceived--under the light thus borne in upon him--that this was not an
amendment which the Tory party could safely support; and he accordingly
advised Mr. Bartley to withdraw it. Mr. Gladstone made a few scornful
observations; and, without a division, the proposal was huddled out of
sight. It was almost a pity. It would have been such an instructive
spectacle to see the whole Tory party voting that the Catholic Church in
Ireland should have the right to be endowed and established; and some of
the Irish members felt this so much, that they were very much inclined
to force the Tories to a division. But they let the incident pass.
[Sidenote: The triumph of the tweed coat.]
It is one of the curious things about Parliamentary life in England,
that the smallest detail of personal habit attracts the all-searching
gaze of the entire world. Let a man change the shape of his hat, the
colour of his clothes, the style even of his stockings, and the world
knows it all before almost he is himself conscious of the change. And
then, though the House of Commons consists for the most part of men well
advanced in middle life--men who have made their pile in counting-house
or shop, before devoting themselves to a Parliamentary career--it is
also a House where wealth and fashion are very largely represented. It
is often a very well-dressed body; and in this House of Commons, in
particular, there is a very large proportion of well-tailored and
well-groomed young men--especially, of course, on the Tory side. The
consequence is, that you are able to trace the transformations of
fashion, the processions of the seasons, the variety of appropriate
garbs which social and other engagements impose, as accurately in the
House of Commons as in Rotten Row.
[Sidenote: The old order.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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