VI.—Amateur Debating in a High Legislative Body.
WHILE Sir Charles was trying to get the
Government to "give him a night'' to debate
the Ginx's Baby case, and while associations
were being formed in the metropolis for
disposing of him by expatriation or otherwise,
a busy peer, without notice to anybody,
suddenly brought the subject before the
House of Lords. As he had never seen the
Baby, and knew nothing or very little about
him, I need scarcely report the elaborate
speech in which he asked for aristocratic
sympathy on his behalf. He proposed to
send him to the Antipodes at the expense
of the nation.
The Minister for the Accidental
Accompaniments of the Empire was a clever man
—keen, genial, subtle, two-edged, a gentlemanly
and not thorough disciple of Machiavel;
able to lead parliamentary forlorn hopes and
plant flags on breaches, or to cover retreats
with brilliant skirmishing; deft, but never
deep; much moved too by the opinions of his
permanent staff. These on the night in question
had plied him well with hackneyed objections;
but to see him get up and relieve
himself of them—the air of originality, the
really original air he threw around them;
the absurd light which he turned full on the
weaknesses of his noble friend's propositions,
was as beautiful to an indifferent critic as it
was saddening to the man who had at heart
the sorrows of his kind. If that minister
lived long he would be forced to adopt and
advocate in as pretty a manner the policy
he was dissecting.
Lord Munnibagge, a great authority in
economic matters, said that a weaker case
had never been presented to Parliament.
To send away Ginx's Baby to a colony at
imperial expense was at once to rob the
pockets of the rich and to decrease our
labor-power. There was no necessity for
it. Ginx's Baby could not starve in a
country like this. He (Lord Munnibagge)
had never heard of a case of a baby starving.
There was no such wide-spread distress as
was represented by the noble lord. There
were occasional periods of stagnation in
trade, and no doubt in these periods the
poorer classes would suffer; but trade was
elastic; and even if it were granted that
the present was a period when employment
had failed, the time was not far off when
trade would recuperate. (Cheers.) Ginx's
Baby and all other babies would not then
wish to go away. People were always
making exaggerated statements about the
condition of the poor. He (Lord Munnibagge)
did not credit them. He believed
the country, though temporarily depressed
by financial collapses, to be in a most healthy
state. (Hear, hear.) It was absurd to say
otherwise, when it was shown by the Board
of Trade returns that we were growing richer
every day. (Cheers.) Of course Ginx's Baby
must be growing richer with the rest. Was
not that a complete answer to the noble lord's
plaintive outcries? (Cheers and laughter.)
That the population of a country was a great
fraction of its wealth was an elementary principle
of political economy. He thought, from
the high rates of wages, that there were not
too many but too few laborers in the country.
He should oppose the motion. (Cheers.)
Two or three noble lords repeated similar
platitudes, guarding themselves as carefully
from any reference to facts, or to the question
whether high rates of wages might not
be the concomitants simply of high prices
of necessaries, or to the yet wider question
whether colonial development might not have
something to do with progress at home. The
noble lord who had rushed unprepared into
the arena was unequal to the forces marshalled
against him, and withdrew his motion.
Thus the great debate collapsed. The
Lords were relieved that an awkward question
had so easily been shifted. The newspapers
on the ministerial side declared that
this debate had proved the futility of the
Ginx's Baby Expatriation question.
"So able an authority as Lord Munnibagge
had established that there was no
necessity for the interference of Government
in the case of Ginx's Baby or any other
babies or persons. The lucid and decisive
statement of the Secretary for the Accidental
Accompaniments of the Empire had shown
how impossible it was for the Imperial
Government to take part in a great scheme
of Expatriation; how impolitic to endeavor
to affect the ordinary laws of free movement
to the Colonies.''
Surely after this the Expatriation people
hid their lights under a bushel!
The Government refused to find a night for
Sir Charles Sterling, and after the Lords'
debate he did not see his way to force a
motion in the Lower House. Meanwhile
Ginx's Baby once more decided a turn in his
own fate. Tired of the slow life of the Club,
and shivering amid the chill indifference
of his patrons, he borrowed without leave
some clothes from an inmate's room, with a
few silver forks and spoons, and decamped.
Whether the baronet and the Club were bashful
of public ridicule or glad to be rid of the
charge, I know not, but no attempt was made
to recover him.
