THE TASTES OF PARLIAMENT.
IIIHE Prime Minister seemed rather anxious on Tuesday to evade the force of Mr. Hughes's suggestion, that a defeat of the proposal to adjourn the Committees of the House on Ascension Day till after the usual hour for the termination of the morning service, and a triumphant majority for the adjournment over the Derby Day, would imply a greater value for the feasts of the Turf than for the feasts of the Church. Mr. Gladstone said that that was not really the true force of the comparison, that "the objection to adjourn over the Derby Day was based on the immorality of horse-racing, while the objection in the case of Ascension Day was that adjournment would interfere with business." We cannot quite enter into Mr. Gladstone's view. The objection to adjourn over the Derby Day was as much an objection to lose valuable Parliamentary time as the objection to delay Committees till two o'clock on Ascension Day. Mr. Hughes did not say, or even intimate, that horse-racing was wrong. It would have been very absurd to do so. What he did say was that so many and such fright- ful abuses are practically bound up with the horse-racing of this country, and especially with the Derby, that there is some reason for not selecting that particular amusement, and that particular race, for special Parliamentary honour. As a matter of fact, it is unquestionable that an excuse for a holiday founded on a race is far more popular than an excuse for a holiday founded on a religious observance. Both ex- cuses serve equally not only for those who intend to witness the race, or take part part in the religious observance, but for those who desire the leisure for their own purposes ; but the former excuse is popular because the race is popular, and the latter excuse is not popular because the religious
observance is not popular. As a criterion of Parliamentary taste,—whether we sympathise with the race-goers, like Mr. Locke, or with the church-goers, like Mr. Hughes, or with both, like Mr. Beresford Hope, or with neither, like the dis- contented Radicals, it is impossible to deny that the decision of the House is tolerably decisive. The proposal to delay by two hours the meeting of Committees on Ascension Day was defeated by 52 to 47; the proposal to adjourn over the Derby Day was carried by 212 to 58. And it cannot be doubted, moreover, that the feeling on behalf of the Derby adjourn- ment is a growing one. In 1848 the sense of the House was 'tested on this very subject by Mr. Hume,—Mr. Bright -arguing with great vehemence against Lord George Bentinck's proposal as the proposal of a man "who had given up racing to become a politician,"—and the adjournment was carried only by a majority of 103 to 90,—a very different majority to that of Tuesday night. And again, in 1849, the motion was carried only by a majority of 19, in a still larger House, 138 against 119. That was when Lord John Russell was Minister, the Minister expressly approving the adjournment. Now, as we see, under the administration of a still more earnest politician, the majority for adjourning over the Derby Day is nearly four to one. In the meantime, the moral accessories of the Derby Day have certainly not improved. If there were any scruple about sacrificing poli- tical business for the sake of the Derby in 1848, one would suppose those scruples would hardly be fewer or less weighty in 1872. The complaints of the waste of political oppor- tunity are heavier now than they were then. The subsidiary motives which affect the question of doing honour to what Lord Palmerston called our "Isthmian Games" are hardly so favourable to the holiday now as they were then. And that the adjournment is in fact of the nature of a Parliamentary honour, Lord Palmerston's celebrated language on the subject positively implies. The English equivalent for the "Isthmian Games" of Greece cannot be otherwise than an institution held up to public esteem.
Now, what has caused this great accession to the favour in which Parliament holds the Race ? In great measure, we should say, a growing dislike to all Puritanism, together with a not very noble pride in the sort of reputation for fastness which Lord Palmerston's jovial air in talking of the Derby and other matters, tended to diffuse. Then, again, the genuine earnestness of the men at the head of affairs has unquestionably added a certain flavour to the dislike felt for the church-goers and to the partizanship for the race-goers. Cakes and ale were popular while Lord Palmerston was in power, but they are more than popular now. But the true place to look for the real nature of the growth of taste in this direction, whether in Parliament or in the people, is the public Press, and especially that part of the public Press which recognises most impressively the popularity of these festivities. The truth is, that in the pre-
sent day nothing seems to take like physical sensationalism,— something that stirs the emotions a very little, and the senses and appetites a good deal; that is exciting, and that excites with- out any appeal to the intellect ; that confusee the picturesque with the coarser and stronger sentiments, the sensation of im- mensity with thelove of bright effects, the dissipation produced by that loss of personal responsibility characteristic of all great crowds with the excitements of risk and gain, the swell of emotion in moments of popular suspense with brilliant colours and delicate wines. The taste for what we may call high- flushed amusements,—amusements of the rougeable kind,—has been enormously increased by the use made of them in the Press, which produces its most telling effects by describing them,--while these descriptions again bring vast numbers of new amusement-lovers to share them. The Daily Telegraph probably relies on the literary rouge-pot for more than half its circulation. Indeed, what would it be without descrip- tions "of those wild, swift, passionate three minutes," as it described the three minutes of the race on Wednesday, "which follow when the multitude, with a cry that is like the voice of the sea, proclaims They're off V and a million of human beings for that space of time think but one thought, and live with one heart "? It is this growth of the necessity for, rather than the delight in, highly wrought scenes of visible excitement, in the public at large which, as it spread to the House of Commons, has produced a greater and greater impatience of ordinary plodding work, and more and more sympathy with strongly spiced amusements, till at last the House carries by nearly four to one a resolution for adjournment over the Derby, which in the days of Lord George Bentinck it only just carried in respectably filled Houses, by very narrow majorities, and that, too, when time for carrying what are said to be urgent measures is very scarce. And this deliberate wastefulness of time on enjoyment of course leads to more wastefulness. We were not surprised to see that the House was counted out on Tuesday, for the sixth or seventh time this Session, as a preparation for the adjourn- ment over Wednesday. Parliament is evidently becoming more and more averse to steady, unexciting work. It had a long Whitsuntide holiday, and the day after it met again it was counted out, but not till it had resolved by a far greater majority than any known even under the star of Lord George Bentinck or Lord Palmerston, to give its great horse-racing holiday all the honours, and to snub any one who hinted at the claims of Parliamentary duty. Now there is no harm, either in taking a holiday when one is due, or in using it to see a race ; but it is not satisfactory to see the Parliamentary taste for holidays grow so rapidly, nor to see the increasing prefer- ence felt for holidays which lend a certain amount of credit, and give a good deal of stimulus, to the vulgarest of modern excite- ments, and which raise up a school of literature in which it is almost regarded as a positive moral merit to have been witness of an event on which the ownership of a heap of money was depending all round the globe, or as the Daily Telegraph nobly paraphrases it, "under Indian palm groves, amid Australian gum-trees, in the shadow of African mimosas, and beneath Canadian pines."
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