Punch: Punch (36.1859)

March 26, 1859.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

123

Let who would supply reflection,

Still 'twas his to find objection:

As one of his party's tools,

At the Board of Trade he rules,

Which—since this appointment made, •

Should be spelt " The Bored of Trade."

Till, when qualms of conscience pleaded,

He, with Walpole's aid, seceded

And magnanimous gave o'er

His office-seat to DoNouq|iMOitE.

Donoughmore—who, all confess,

Cannot possibly do less

For Ids thousands by the year,

Than the worthy who lies here.

LOOK OUT AHEAD !

What next ? Here is the Armstrong gun with a sweet little range
of about five miles, and here is Mr. Somebody, whose name we forget,
with a patent machine for suffocating one's enemies with a black
sulphurous smoke, under cover of which canopy Britannia shall
henceforth rule the waves. It is to be anticipated that the_ Times of
1959, permanently enlarged to three volumes folio per diem, will contain
such startling facts as these:—

" April L The great Cham of France declared war against England at
2'30 p.m. Travellers all returned to England by the electric wire at
2"35. Channel Fleet and militia called out at 2 36. Captain Smith,
of the Engineers, walked down to Dover beach with an Armstrong gun
in his pocket weighing exactly three ounces and a half, and constructed
to throw a ton and a half of shot two hundred and four miles, seventeen
hundred times in one minute. Having adjusted this instrument on a
bathing machine, Capt. Smith, by the aid of a strong telescope, got a
good sight of Paris, and proceeded to business. Shot No. 1 missed, and
was last seen going over into the Bay of Biscay. Shot No. 2 struck the
Hotel de Louvre, and being an explosive shell, destroyed half Paris ;
a third attempt was equally successful, destroying the other half.

" After this pretty practice, (though better has been made we must
admit) the seven-and-twenty double Leviathans, built for the transport
of troops, embarked three hundred and eight thousand volunteers,
armed with the patent self-acting, self-loading, self-aiming, and self-
cleaning gun, now universally used in the British army. They were
headed by Lords Brougham and Palmerston, those two surprising
veterans, who, we believe, will never grow any older, and were landed
at Boulogne at exactly 2'58 ; twenty-eight minutes after the declaration
of war. Being provided with Bray's patent traction-engines our gallant
fellows were enabled to reach Paris in 22 minutes, and thanks to the
efficacy of the gun above alluded to, made very short work of the
inhabitants of the country they passed through. They entered Paris
(or rather what was left of it) under cover of the celebrated noxious
smoke-producing machine, which exceedingly horrified the helpless
Parisians, but winch, being no thicker than an ordinary London fog,
had few terrors for the bold sons of Albion. Capt. Smith and the
Armstrong gun having arrived shortly afterwards, made such play on
the provinces, from the top of the column in the Place Vendome, that
they sent telegraphic despatches at once up to town, placing themselves
entirely at the disposal of their conquerors; the last town gave in its
allegiance at 3'45, and the war was thus at an end in one hour and
forty-five minutes from its commencement. It is surprising to us that
France, who has been so repeatedly foiled in attempts of this kind,
should have again endeavoured to disturb the peace of Europe. We
had hoped that war had been entirely put an end to by the perfect
state to which we have brought our artillery and engineering. The
French people must surely have forgotten, how the five small Arm-
strongs placed on the Brocken have sufficed to keep the English
colonies of Prussia, Austria, Saxony, and Poland in order ? Or have
they forgotten, how the grandson of the celebrated Bishop Spurgeon
destroyed the Pope, and, in fact, Boman Catholicism in general, by one
or two weU-directed shots from the new Tabernacle tower ? We could
produce instances to prove our case in any number, but as they are patent
to the merest school-boy, we will refrain from bringing them forward.
It has been decided that France shall be employed as a large garden in
which to grow the horse-radish for the rosbif so dear to ever Briton."

Why shouldn't we see all this, we should like to know? Beally
there don't appear to be any limit at all; it is only to be hoped that
all these tremendous inventions will quietly and calmly snuff out
Bellona's torch, whenever she feels mclrned to show it. After all, it
is very likely that we shall at last by mutual consent abolish gunpowder
and steam m warfare, and come back to the orthodox instruments,
fists. Fine times those would be for prizefighters. General Sir T.
Sayers the Bight Hon. Sir H. Broome, Lord Chancellor Young
Beed, would of course be some of the new titles, and wouldn't sound
so very badly. At any rate, if we do get back to first principles and
fists, England will stand the best chance of the lot; we can back her
against all comers, and our money may be heard of at our office.

LESSON FOR AGED LOVERS.

At the Exeter Assizes, last week, in an action for breach of promise
of marriage, it was arranged between the parties that a verdict should
be taken for the Plaintiff, with £200 damages. The Plaintiff was
twenty-eight years old; the Defendant upwards of fifty. Seven years
back, the Plaintiff had been engaged to an individual who had died;
and now her heart had been broken again through the breach of
promise which had been committed by the Defendant, that inconstant
old gentleman! Fickle fogy!—he may consider himself let down
lightly in having to pay only £200 ; for *a wife would have cost him as
much in almost no time,—remaining, for an indeterminable period, a
source of indefinite expenditure. Elderly trifler that he is, let him
acknowledge that he is too well off a bargain of the cost of whose
fulfilment, in these days of hooped drapery, it would have been imnos
sible to estimate the magnitude or predict the end.

Had this gross case of senile faithlessness gone to a British jury, no
doubt that sympathetic assemblage of Englishmen and fathers would
have marked their sense of the aged rover's baseness in sporting with
the affections of an artless girl, as her barrister would have besought
them to do, by swinging him to a figure considerably over £200. In
ordinarily giving heavy damages to young ladies against old gentlemen
who have disappointed their matrimonial expectations, British juries are
sometimes thought to afford too emphatic a sanction to the principle
which ranks pecuniary considerations very highly amongst the legiti-
mate motives to matrimony, and rather ignores the necessity for much
love in the case. Well, even if this is so, no great harm is done. A
hoary simpleton is smartly fined for his folly; that is all. And if the
fine ought to be proportionate in magnitude to the folly, what damages
can be too heavy to inflict upon the grey-headed oaf who is capable ol
promising to marry a girl, whereas he is old enough to be her father ?
The sum should only fall short of the penalty that he would deserve to
pay for performing such a thoughtless and ridiculous promise.

PBIVILEGES OF THE GUABDS.

" What are the Privileges of the Guards ?" exclaimed a Belgravian
beauty, who little suspected that the question was asked only iu a
military point of view; " Why, I can tell you that the Guards ride the
most beautiful horses, dance with the prettiest girls, talk English in a
style deliciously their own, are distinguished for having the very best
moustaches and manners, lisp, stare,_yawn, flirt, waltz better than any
one else, are seen everywhere, are invited everywhere, and are dear,
handsome, silly, amusing, good-humoured, absurd, charming, universal
favourites wherever they go. These are a few of the Privileges of the
Guards, and I don't wonder at the other officers being jealous of them ! "
Here our Belgravian beauty blushed so much, that she was obhged to
leave the room.