Punch (12.1847)

MAV DAY FOR TEE SWEEPS I./ 1847.

P£NN PUNCH & THE SMITHFIELD SAVAGES.

" O pardon me,—
That 1 am meek and gentle with these butchers."—Shakespeare.

n 1683, the great William Feins—was there ever regal
purple to be compared with his Quaker drab ?—made a
treaty with the savages. The American historian has
chronicled the event, an American painter has put it upon
canvass. " We meet," said Pesn, " on the broad pathway
of good faith and good will ; no advantage shall be taken
on either side, but all shall be openness and love. 1 will
not call you children, for parents sometimes chide their
children too severely ; nor brother, only, for brothers differ.
The friendship between me and you I will not compare to
a chain, for that the rains might rust or the falling tree
might bieak. We are the same as if one man's b>dy were
to be divided into two parts : we are all one flesh and blood." Such
were the words of William Penn.

" And the children of the past," says George Bancroft, now
American Minister at the Court of Her Britannic Majesty, " were
touched by the sacred doctrines, and renounced their guile and their
revenge."

Last week, Punch having endued his person in the humanizing drab
—having crowned his " dome of thought" with the true, ennobling
broadbrim—since it was never yet removed that a coronet might
take its place—Punch, in fact, dressing himself after the manner of
William Penn, and taking with him John Leech, his own historical
painter, Punch did last week visit Smithfield to have a conference
and make a treaty with the Smithfield Savages. " Look to the right
and you will behold the pictur !"

All Smithfield and its salubrious neighbourhood seenoeM humming
with the intelligence of the promised advent of Punch. Ere t he sun,
with the heavy, inflamed eye of a drunkard, looked upon the shambles
of Whitechapel, Smithfield and its roundabout were wide awake !

A burst of marrow-bones and cleavers, whilst with trembling voice
it is essayed to sing or say all the names of all the tribes !

First came the Cock Laneannahs ; then the Cow Cros ees ; then—
with their own wild yellings, at which many a bullock's heart has
t-huddered—the Long Lanequannets—and then the bold Bartholemew-
wabs. Cleavers and pole-axes, and steels and knives, glittered on the
shoulders, glistened in the girdles, and dangltd from the middle I
All the savages had their faces greased with more than ordinary
cire fur the occasion ; and wore aprons stained with a peculiar blue
known to these people.

The clock of St. Sepulchre, as Punch arrived on the ground, struck
ten ; he was received with the loudest greeting.

" Children of slaughter ! chips of the block !" said Punch, wisely en-
deavouring to accommodate himself to their own poetic diction—"if
yru are butchers, are you not men ? As butchers and as men let the
sweet-bread of ratification be eaten among us. Let there be no more
grumblings between us. Henceforth, let not your cattle affright cur
wives and children, our grandfathers and grandmothers ; let not the
horns of your bu Is be tipped, like red-ink pens, in the flesh of any of our
brethren. Why should the beasts of the Cow Crossees be driven upon
the hunting-grounds of commerce ? why should they gore the men of
the Citywahs ? Why should the tender squaws and little ones of
Fleet Street be tossed and trodden on by the brutes of the Long Lane-
quannets ? Brethren, there has been ill-blood between us. My heart
is turned into water when I think of it. Bruises and broken joints have
come of your bulls ; and fright has entered the wigwam of the shop-
keeper driven there—with very often a child in her arms—by an
insane ox ! My brethren, I say, let this cease. Let us bury the
pole axe and cleaver here in Smithfield—even here in the Field of
Smith.

" And hereafter let not your cattle be driven upon our hunting-
grounds of trade, but strike them down afar from our wigwams ; that
their blood may not reek at our hearths, and bring with its vapours
the blackness of death.

And, brethren, let this Field of Smith, in memory of this day, be

And the sun rose and rose in slaughterous redness. And then Smith- unflagged ; let the stones be taken up, and trees planted, and turf
field savages, pouring in from every side, took their places on the laid down; and the place be made a pleasant place for our squaws
classic, blood-dyed Field of Smith, awaiting Punch. and our little ones. And, as you take away the stones, and lay down