§ MR. DAVENPORT BROMLEYrose to call the attention of the First Commissioner of Public Works to the condition of the streets in the vicinity of Palace Yard. The state of affairs outside Palace Yard was not quite so satisfactory as it might be. He should be inclined, if he were not in that House, to call it—and if he were outside that House he would call it—if not atrocious, at all events disgraceful, and ludicrously inconvenient. He wished, therefore, to call the attention of the noble Lord to Sessional Order No. 8, issued on the 10th February last, to the effect that the Commissioners of Metropolitan Police should take care that the passages and thoroughfares leading to the Houses of Parliament were kept free and open, so as that no obstruction should be offered to Members going to and from the House. Let them imagine what would be the position of some Gentleman who had asked some distinguished foreigner to come down and see that House. Possibly that distinguished foreigner might wish to see 889 the interior of the House and the working of that administrative assembly, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer told them would bear comparison with any assembly in the world, whilst the gentlemen of the Reform League told them it was an assembly of bad characters, and filled with men who had humpbacks, and one eye only each. The distinguished foreigner might get with facility as far on his journey as Trafalgar Square, when his nerves would derive their first shock from a sight of the national cruet-stand—he might recover a little afterwards at the sight of Landseer's lions, which he might wish, however, had somewhat larger pedestals. He would then get a distinct glimpse of the towers of the Houses of Parliament, and would, of course, expect something grand, but when he came to the final crossing, unless a man of strong nerve, he would probably wish himself at home again. The guardian policeman, however, extending to him the last privilege remaining to a Member of this House, assists him over, like an Israelite crossing the Red Sea, with a wall of arrested traffic on the right hand and on the left. He would then see a state of things not to be surpassed by any gold diggings or oil city in the world. He would see a huge hole which had lately been filled up. It had been filled up suddenly like the hole in the Roman Forum. Perhaps Her Majesty's Ministers had induced some heroic and patriotic Member to jump in and settle the Reform question. Beyond this, the distinguished foreigner would see a low hoarding, on which was stuck a placard, intimating that the whole territory belonged to the Metropolitan District Railway Company, a steam-engine, which puffed perpetually into the faces of bystanders, and, a little further on, he would meet with that mysterious and solemn interrogatory—that awful question to which no one in this House or out of it was ever able to furnish a reply—"Who's Griffiths?" A friend of his (Mr. Bromley's), who fortunately was a good horseman, was passing by on horseback, when a blast from the steam-engine caused his horse to swerve so much as completely to destroy the equanimity of one cab and cause it to cannon against another, thus creating a great disturbance and interruption of traffic. That gentleman, who was much attached to all the venerable institutions of the country, exclaimed, almost with tears in his eyes, 890 and his voice quivering with emotion, "Only conceive, if I had been a Bishop." Carrying one's eyes further back, there was observable—he did not know what. People said it was to be a fountain, or some other sort of pump; and Canning's statue stood there, turning up its nose at all the disagreeable sights and smells. With regard to the railway that was being excavated in the immediate vicinity of the House, he regretted that the Bill for that line had been passed. He believed it would shake the foundations of Westminster Abbey—and that Westminster Hospital, within a few yards of which it passed, would be rendered untenable, as far as the comfort of the patients was concerned, when the railway was in operation. It had left neither the dead nor the living at rest, for he was told that the bones of our ancestors had been removed, from the burial ground near the Abbey, to Woking Cemetery. He wondered it had not struck the directors that Westminster Hall would make a good terminus or refreshment-room. In fact, whenever he heard of metropolitan improvements, he shuddered, and he might say that he entertained the greatest dread of that inscrutable body—the Board of Works. He was told that the railway was waiting for the Thames Embankment, and the Thames Embankment was waiting for the railway; and so between them they came to a dead-lock. The Thames Embankment was doing nothing, had done nothing, and intended to do nothing, and the authors of a report; recently issued congratulated themselves on their having done nothing. He looked over the bridge the other day, and saw eight men and a boy at work. It was difficult, in these cases, to pitch upon the right man to blame; but, generally speaking, the works in connection with that House and the neighbourhood had been carried on, according to the national practice, in the most dilatory manner. That House had been very nearly as long in building as the Temple of Jerusalem—and his belief was that it never would be completed. In conclusion, he begged to call the attention of the First Commissioner of Public Works to the notice he had put upon the paper.