Mr. Chamberlain moved on Tuesday that a Committee of five
Members should be appointed to form, with five Peers, a Joint Committee of both Houses to inquire into the expediency of sanctioning the Channel Tunnel. Mr. Gladstone explained that this course was necessary, because only Parliament could now resist the Tunnel. Former Governments had so committed the Executive to an international agreement on the subject, that the present Government, though it could submit to Par- liament, could not proprio mote forbid the project. We presume there are members of the Government who favour it, though not, we trust, because they secretly hope for the conscription, which the Tunnel will render indispens- able. Fortunately, neither the Joint Committee nor any other Committee can do much harm. Parliament and the people have decided that Great Britain shall not be a peninsula hanging on to the Continent, and with its trade at the mercy of any Fenian with a gallon of nitro-glycerine ; and if both the Front Benches joined to support the Bill, they could not carry it. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how sane men can support a project which will so increase all the foreign embarrassments of the Government, and render panics so incessant.
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