MAIDEN SPEECH, 1 FEBRUARY 1887, R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM (NORTH-WEST LANARKSHIRE)

A debate on the Queen’s Speech forms the best occasion for a new Member to lose his political virginity (Laughter.), and, therefore, I cast myself at once on the forbearance and the generosity of the House.

On glancing over the Queen’s Speech, I am struck with the evident desire which prevailed in it to do nothing at all. There was a similarity in its paragraphs to the laissez-faire school of political economy. Not one word was said in the Speech about lightening the taxation under which Her Majesty’s lieges at present suffered; not one word to make that taxation more bearable; not one word to bridge over the awful chasm existing between the poor and the rich; not one word of kindly sympathy for the sufferers from the present commercial and agricultural depression (Hear, hear!) – nothing but platitudes, nothing but views of society through a little bit of pink glass. To read Her Majesty’s Speech, one would think that at this present moment this happy country was passing through one of the most pronounced periods of commercial activity and prosperity it has ever known. One would think that wheat was selling at 50 shillings a-quarter, and that the price of bread had not gone up. One would think that poverty, drunkenness, prostitution, and wretchedness were in a fair way to be utterly extirpated; and one would think further that Great Britain had made the first important step towards that millennium when the Irish landlord would cease from troubling, and when the landlords and tenants would lie down in amity, and finally be at rest. (Laughter.)

Of course, it is matter for congratulation that this country was not suddenly called upon to enter upon a Quixotic crusade to place Prince Alexander of Battenberg upon the Throne of Bulgaria.

We are thankful for small mercies, and I supposed we must be content. If this unlucky nation had to forego the pleasure of paying for the vagaries of Prince Alexander, it had still a pretty large group of needy Royalties who were placed on the Civil List of this country. (Laughter and Radical cheers.)

It is not to be expected that Her Majesty’s Government would vouchsafe to the House any idea of when the British troops might be withdrawn from Egypt. That is expecting far too much. But, surely, it would be wise to let the House know when it was intended to withdraw those troops from their inactivity in that pestilential region, and from playing the ungrateful role of oppressors of an already down-trodden nationality. (Radical cheers.) But no.