THE COMMONS AND THE DERBY DAY. T HE contrast between the
exalted virtue of the House of Commons on Tuesday, and its full participation in the frailty of our common humanity on Wednesday, is a common one. Most of us can be heroes for a short time, and when no sacrifice is involved in our choice. On Tues- day Members were severely moral, but this was at a sitting at which the Government were bound to keep a House. On Wednesday no such obligation existed, and for a Mem- ber to be in his place meant the sacrifice of a holiday for which, perhaps, his arrangements had long been fixed. But when all allowances have been made, there is food for somewhat cynical amusement in the spectacle of the Commons breaking through the tradition of nearly half-a-century in order to sit on the Derby Day, and then finding their resolution wholly inadequate to the draft so rashly made on it. The refusal to adjourn found 158 sup- porters ; but of those 158, how many were ready to give effect to their words some twenty hours later ? Just 13. At 1 o'clock the 13 had grown to 19, and then the Speaker gave them three hours' grace, and came back at 4 o'clock to see what second thoughts had done for the balance of the previous day's majority. Alas ! 123 of them were still unaccounted for, and the House adjourned.
Major Rasch made the best case he could for the adjournment, when he argued that the House was entitled to one holiday between Easter and Whitsuntide. The work-, he said, is bard, the pay is bad, "and eight hours are not in it." But the force of this reasoning is a good deal lessened by the number of holidays that the House has lately allowed itself. The Members are like schoolboys in their love for playing truant. When the Session was young, we heard of nothing but com- plaints of the impossibility of getting men to come down to the House. Either they were going to stand again, and had to look after their constituents ; or they were not going to stand again, and were deaf to the call of the Whips. The Unionist majority actually dwindled down to a point which seemed to bring defeat within measurable distance, and all because of the determination of Members to give themselves, not an occasional holiday, but an indefinite leave of absence. Since Easter, no doubt, things have been better ; but six weeks is not a very long spell of work when it has been preceded by two months of comparative idleness, and is to be followed by the Whitsun- tide recess. Mr. Gedge did his best to lift the question on to a higher level, but somehow his well-meant exertions came to nothing. The House knew by instinct that whatever might be the result of the division, there would be no sitting the next day; and when Mr. Gedge appealed to it not to "encourage young men in a spirit of gambling," he did not'quite secure the respectful hearing he perhaps deserved. "Perhaps deserved," we say, because we are inclined to think, as probably the House thought, that young men are not much encouraged or discouraged by anything the House of Com- mons does. Though the House would not listen to Mr. Gedge, they voted as he wished them to vote ; but we question whether on Wednesday morning a single drag was countermanded, a single railway-ticket the less sold, a single luncheon-basket left unpacked, in consequence of the implied censure on gambling. The morality of the House of Commons is too erratic and too inconsistent to ensure its general acceptance in the character of a moral teacher, and on no subject is there more uncertainty and more inconsistency than on this very question of gambling. There are certain forms of gambling, no doubt, which Parliament would at once put down. It would not be of the least use for the proprietors of Monte Carlo to try and set up a branch establish- ment at Brighton. Publicity will shock us when nothing else will, and in the case supposed, if the existing law proved inadequate, not a voice, except possibly Mr. La.bouchere's, would be raised against a proposal to make it stronger. So long, however, as publicity is avoided, gambling may go on to any extent. It is common in private houses, and the police look with friendly indiffer- ence on the crowds which daily assemble outside the offices of the sporting papers, though it is allowable to doubt whether the interest thus shown in the result of a, race indicates only an intelligent appreciation of horse- flesh, and would not be equally keen if the subject were not a race but a lottery. The love of making money without working for it is deeply seated in human nature ; and if labour be the primeval curse, it is hardly strange that we should try to escape from it. Possibly gambling will some day go out of fashion as completely as drinking has gone out among the educated classes. But in the interval it is not likely to be suppressed by isolated protests on the part of the House of Commons, or by exaggerated denunciations of its inherent wicked- ness. It is no more inherently wicked than drinking is ; it only becomes wicked when it is pushed to excess, and what " excess " means is a point that each man must deter- mine for himself. Gambling differs, however, from drinking in this, that to the well-to-do classes it offers a temptation that drinking no longer offers. Moderate drinkers are the rule ; moderate gamblers, we fear, are the exception. There is abundance of occasion, therefore, for the many exhortations which are constantly being launched against gambling. The misfortune is, that the great majority of them try to find a definition of the practice which shall justify them in ranking it among acts which are sinful per se, instead of among acts which are only sinful in certain persons and under certain circumstances.
The real reason against the adjournment of the House of Commons on Derby Day, is the absence of any good reason why it should adjourn. When the presumption is against taiiing a holiday, the reason assigned for taking one is sure to be scrutinised rather closely. And when so scrutinised, there is really nothing to be said for it. The House does not need a holiday, for the Derby is usually run near the time of the Whitsuntide recess, and the addition of another day to the rather long release from toil which the House of Commons then enjoys—at least, in ordinary years—would, to the majority of Members, give far more real pleasure. The Members do not want to see the race run ; for only a small percentage of them go to Epsom, and of those who do go, only a few are within view of the course. There was a time, perhaps, when the Derby had really something of the character of a great public holiday,—when Sir John Lubbock's Act was un- thought of ; when the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race excited no interest outside the two Universities ; when Sunday was accounted a day for church-going ; and "eight hours at the sea-side" was a phrase as yet unin- vented. Possibly, in that remote past, the notion that once a year peer and costermonger rubbed shoulders on Epsom Downs, and derived some undefined benefit from sharing in the great national pastime, had some foundation in fact. But even if we give the Derby the benefit of the doubt, and assume it to have been once a festival of this engaging and popular type, it is impossible to suppose that there is anything of this idyllic character about it now. One effect of the spread of gambling has been to diminish the reason- able interest felt in racing. More people have money depending on the result, but few people over and above those who have money depending on the result care so much as to know the name of the winning horse. So far, therefore, as the adjournment has any meaning—it is nearer the truth, perhaps, to say that it has none—it is a recog- nition of an amusement which is rather on the down-grade. When all the Members who wish to go to the Derby have been allowed for, more than enough will remain to carry on the business of the country if they choose to attend ; and there is no need to give a factitious importance to a par- ticular race by assuming that every man who has a seat in the Legislature would be at Epsom if his Parliamentary duties permitted.
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