THE LADIES AND THE PARLIAMENT.

(NOTES OF A REJECTED REPORT.)

Question; the Admission of Ladies into the House of Gentlemen.

MR. GY B-Y.

Sir, I rise under feelings which fathers, and brothers,
Sons, lovers, and cousins, and uncles, and others;
The Benedict loving-the bachelor lonely,
Will treat with no scoffing, but sympathy only.
I move that the ladies-the source of our joys,
Promoters of harmony-(Uproar and noise)—

I move, Sir, that these, man's enchanters and wizards,
Who, daily extracting laced footmen from lizards,
May haply convert our debates into wit,

(Oh! Oh! and loud cheers)-we among us admit!
I move the provision of seats for the Fair.
(The motion, when seconded, put from the Chair.)

He fear'd it might lead to impressions, that great
Alterations were made in the frame-work of State;
The country, he thought, would be apt to surmise
That ladies had taken the House by surprise,
And also their seats in it-though he could quote
The Reform Act to show they had no right to vote.
The ladies besides-he would here take his stand—
Were chiefly Conservative all through the land.
Much influence, doubtless, belong'd to bright eyes,
And many dark mischiefs were sure to arise.

MR. H- -E.

Unaccustom'd to speaking, he begg'd leave to say,
That women were excellent things in their way;-
Some, rather expensive—some, just the reverse-
He meant, where their husbands had charge of the purse.
He wish'd, ere the motion was carried or lost,

To know what the new female benches would cost.
The House might cry "Oh !" but the other word, "pay,"
Was just as important at this time of day!

In making the seats, if a "deal" could be saved,
The country would see they were not quite depraved.
He thought it but right that the ladies should bear
The expense ;-well, they couldn't object to a share.
It were well could the House at an estimate peep;
Though he held women dear, yet he liked their seats cheap.

SIR A-W A-w.

With pain he had listen'd to this proposition;
He dreaded, should deeply deplore, the admission;
He felt that the morals of ladies-(Hear, hear)—

Would be blighted yet more in that masculine sphere.

Already their minds were familiar with sin ;
If tainted when out, how corrupt when within!
The churches were open; and as for the fair-
He wish'd he could meet a few more of them there.

MR. RK.

He rose to relieve the last speaker's distress

About ladies' loose morals; the cause was, the Press.
The press was the witch-from his soul he abhorr'd her-
That poisoned society-(Noise and disorder).

The press was a demon, with fiends in collusion;
Now he had a press-(Laughter, “ Oh!" and confusion)——
If Canada-(Groaning)—twas one of his cares
That ladies should know our colonial affairs;
When they were admitted, he'd certainly show
That Canada-(Question !)-the press was his foe;
He intended to move an address to the Crown-
For Canada-(Question!—the speaker sat down).
MR. P-T—N.

He rose, with no wish to prolong the debate,
But just to remark that he'd nothing to state;
To prove his assertion, he pour'd out a show'r
Of nothings, that occupied more than an hour.

MR. O'C-LL.

Sir, loving the sex, and beloved, I have lent
To this motion a welcome and cordial assent;

Though it seems, when we know what the orator's trade is,
A project for " boring the ears" of the ladies.

I ask but for this, in no tone disaffected,

That Catholic females be never rejected.

Dear women of Erin-oh! much to be pitied

Are they who can't hear me-they must be admitted.

Oh! their smiles !-and their eyes, that out-glitter the gem

And their hearts that throb wildly, as mine does for them!
Concede but this point, and I give, with devotion,
The powers of my poor feeble mind to the motion.

SIR RT I -S.

He could not concede; and he thought the Dissenter,
Though pious, should not be permitted to enter.
The ladies once in, they might creep on too far,
Were the portals of Parliament thus left ajar.
Whole hosts of white hands, in a month or two after,
Might knock at the two Universities-(Laughter).

MR. T. D─E

Not one single Member had cause for dissent;
The married ones might-yet he could not relent.
"I am off to the House; I must be at my post,"
Was the green-room or club-lounger's evening boast;
But how when his wife, now as meek as a mouse,
Should steal down—(Alarm on all sides of the House)-
Mr. E. L. B -R.

Sir, with joy I concede all the motion can ask!
If solemn our functions, if trying our task,

Still woman-ward more should our sympathies flow,
And learn how to feel-which will teach us to know.
The greenest oak-wreath that Philosophy weaves
Were dreary, without a few flow'rs in its leaves.
We paint Fame as woman; what exquisite tone
Could tell of great triumph, sweet truth, but her own!
Receive then the ladies, those haters of wrong,
Whose lips make our language but laughter and song;
Those soothers of trouble and quellers of strife,
Mortality's May-queens, the lustres of life;
Who flirt with a grief as they would with a fan,
And smile away all the vain vapours of man;
Whose fondness, or favour, to sages delectable,
Makes the mere "exquisite" almost respectable;
Who, in our sickness, are abler than Halford;
In counsel, more earnest and subtle than Talfourd;
Whose faces make home so bewitching-who pout
More bewitchingly still when we rise to go out;
Who will, until three in the morning, sit up for us-
Tea ready made-when they pour out a cup for us;
Angels, who only dwell here among things
Such as mortals, by virtue of not having wings!-
This motion is merely a movement of love,
To open the door of the ark-to the dove.
Its patience shall calm us, its faithfulness guide,
Its meekness read lessons to rancour and pride;
Its beauty shall light the dark orbs of the blind,
The tame shall be kindled, the vulgar refined.

("Divide," and great cheering;-the plan, on division,
Adopted, 'midst mingled delight and derision.)

MONTHLY COMMENTARY.

Lenity of the Law" Comparisons are Odious"-Tender Mercies.

LENITY OF THE LAW.-This is a subject on which we are very rarely required to declaim. One word may be admitted upon it, if only for its novelty. It has reference to a topic which we adverted to last month-the unfeeling factory-system. Who does not remember Charles Lamb's exquisite homily upon the " Homes of the Poor," which first appeared in these, our honoured pages, some dozen years ago? How he paints the children of those homeless homes! He describes them as haggling, and bartering. Their discourse, says he, is not of toys, or childish pastimes or pleasures, but of the price of coals and potatoes! The little workers in the factories, however, are worse off even than this. They can have no time for talk. Such forlorn speculations can only come to them in the night-time in their dreams. Out before day-break, and home after dark, for the greater part of the year, what opportunity have they to " babble o' green fields," even if their hearts would let them ? Surely when the law," amended" as it is, admits of such a cruel tasking of their tender limbs, any violation of that law tending to harass their bodies, and crush their infant spirits yet further, is a crime scarcely to be exceeded. How is such an offence dealt with?

We learn from a provincial paper (the Leeds Times) that two individuals were recently convicted of offences against the Factory Act. The one had worked two children under ten years of age more than nine hours in the day; the other had paid the children committed to his superintendence for eleven hours' work only, when he was regularly employing them twelve. It might be difficult to apportion the exact amount of punishment which offences of so shameless and profligate a nature as this would seem to merit. One might fairly expect the judgment to be as heavy as the law would allow, more especially as the parties had been "brought up before" on the same charge! To the indignation, if not to the surprise, of all who may read the account, it appears that the sub-inspector of factories who introduced the case, assured the magistrates that he "did not mean to press for penalties," he only sought a conviction. The wrongers of the most innocent, and helpless, and hard-fated of all living creatures in the land-the tyrants and plunderers of these wretched and industrious children, were consequently fined one shilling each, and discharged! Is not such a decree sufficient to inflame the minds of a whole district-of a whole population? What must be the labourer's thoughts?-what the natural promptings of his feeling, as the newspaper brings him tidings of such a sacrifice of justice to a respect for the "respectability" of wealth? such a contempt for the rights, and such an insult to the feelings, of the poor! There are refined readers, perhaps, who will think this sadly "sentimental," and style it cant and commonplace; with others, who are not superior to such vulgar things as human sympathy and a sense of justice, we shall be amply borne out, and have our emotions understood. It is out of individual wrongs that great rights come. A single expression of scorn, a solitary act of injustice, may work the most sudden and wonderful change in the sentiments of an entire people. It is for wealth to remember, above all things, by what it is created, and by what a fine and fragile thread it holds its tenure and existence.

"COMPARISONS ARE ODIOUS."-Of all Members of the present Parliament, he of Bath is perhaps the one to whom we least desire to be likened. With this assurance, we are in no danger of being suspected of a desire to undertake a crusade against the press. There are some points on which we should probably not feel complimented in being mistaken for Lord Brougham. No one will suspect us, therefore, of a chivalric ardour on behalf of one to whom the "art of self-defence" is as "familiar as his garter." But respect for the press and for the peer, also, induces us to notice a perversion of the powers of the one at the expense of the other. We copy the following from a Conservative evening paper:-" Yesterday, at Union Hall police-office, James Hagan, a man bearing a very strong resemblance in features to Lord Brougham, was brought before Mr. Traill, charged with being drunk and incapable of taking care of himself." Great men pay great prices for their distinction. They cannot take up a paper without a feeling of personal interest. They cannot kill time without being mortally wounded. How they must envy the man who knows that there is nothing about himself even in the double sheet which is brought to him at breakfast! It must be annoying enough to those who occupy a foremost station in the land, and whose self-esteem is not too large to preclude all sense of the ridiculous, to see their personal movements recorded as great events, and their private opinions put forth before they have formed them. But such an allusion as the above is a gratuitous aggravation of the annoyance. It betrays a spirit of pandering, not to the frivolous curiosity, but to the vulgar malignity, of readers. The reporter possibly thought he should please by adapting his impressions of the face of the drunkard to the politics of the journal he was to supply. To a

paper of opposite sentiments he doubtless communicated his convictions that the same features bore a strong resemblance to those of a distinguished Conservative. But these despicable tricks should be looked to; they injure the character of the press in the estimation of discriminative and impartial persons; and for its own sake, if for nothing more, it should be cautious, at this particular juncture, when the question of the stamp-duty is under consideration.

TENDER MERCIES.-That species of heart is not uncommon which Hood has described in one of his whimsical couplets :

"Indeed, to take our haberdashers' hints,

You might have written over it From Flints." "

Every parish supplies its portraiture of the great world; every police-office exhibits on its small stage the workings of the grand system of social misrule. The overseer of a parish in the city-(we ought to have taken note of his name), had the decency, the other day, to recommend a poor woman to sell the body of her child to the surgeons, when she had applied to him for the means of burying it. Mr. Laing, of Hatton-garden, a few days afterwards, evinced precisely the same kind of sympathy for bereavement, the same sense of natural affection. A girl, about eighteen years old, was brought before him, charged with attracting persons to Clerkenwellchurchyard, by her melancholy moaning cries over the grave of her father. The constable found her kneeling on the grave, and crying, "Oh, my poor father!" He took her to the station-house, " where her grief did not cease the whole of the night." No, even the miserable cell, and its squalid drunken inhabitants, failed to console her. This is wonderful. To the magistrate she said "I am very sorry if I have done wrong; I was only crying over my poor father's grave." Mr. Laing replied-" It is a most improper mode of giving expression to your grief, and I should recommend you to avoid it in future." discharge her, with the further warning, "Do not come here again under He was humane enough, however, to similar circumstances." This was the extent of his compassion for the wretched creature as she left the office, weeping bitterly. Not one word that could betray the smallest sensation of pity beyond these. The scene would work up effectively in a romance. Mr. Bulwer would extract a

lesson from it that would outlive a hundred Laings.

In a case of theft, a week or two ago, the same magistrate, who is worth watching, asked a witness how long she was absent from the room in which she left the prisoner. The answer was, "About a minute; think he had time to steal the spoon." The magistrate rejoined, "Don't do not you be throwing impediments in the way-the thing is clear enough; there was ample opportunity for him to take it." Impediments are unpleasant things to magistrates, but they will often occur in the course of inquiries into truth. They have led to many a cold dinner, or the loss of the first act of the comedy. Witnesses should be more considerate, and endeavour to hasten the conviction of prisoners.