Punch (42.1862)

April 12, 1862.

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

151

the children to play with ! We must say we pity the poor coiled-up
creature in her present maternal position. The difficulty with most
parents is to bring up a family j with her, the_ great difficulty is . to
bring one out. She seems heartily tired of sitting, and, after sitting
so long, and yet bringing forth nothing, just like our M.P.’s, now
longing for a fortnight’s holiday. It is proposed, in order to revive
her, and to make her fancy she was in her ‘‘native element,” to let
her have a bath in the Serpentine every morning: for which purpose,
in order to be nearer the spot, she and her family are to be removed
forthwith, it is said to Hatchett’s.

ESSAYS AND REMARKS.

dvice. — There are many
persons who continually offer
you unsolicited advice, which,
when serious, is to do what
they would do if they were in
your place, and what, if they
were so, they, not being you
would perhaps be right in
doing, more probably wrong,
but if you, not being they,
were to do, you would cer-
tainly be a fool.

When, in difficult circum-
stances, you ask advice, be-
cause you really want it, you
will seldom get any of the
least use. Pew will take the
trouble of trying to under-
stand your perplexity, very
few of those who try to under-
stand it will be able, and
most, if not all, of that few,
will confess that they know
not what to advise you.
Plenty of people will give
you ofHiand advice, recommending you to do something which it
is eit her impossible for you to do, or to which it is advisable for you to
do exactly the contrary.

Almost the only advice ever worth anything is that which is paid for,
and that is not always worth the money. One physician in a thousand
may give you good advice. The best advice, on the whole, is that of a
respectable solicitor.

MOTHER CHURCH TRIUMPHANT IN SPAIN.

{For the “ Tablet.”)

Deprecating as too severe the lenient sentence of eleven years’ penal
servitude which has been passed on Don Manuel Matamoros, Don
Angel Alhama, and Don Miguel Trigo, at Granada, for reading the
Bible, the Clamor Publico asks the following impertinent question:—

“ What should we say if, on the plea of reprisals, our brethren living in Protestant
countries were compelled to renounce their religion under pain of being punished,
for exercising it, with the brand of the reprobate and the chain of the convict ? ”

The Clamor Publico, as a Spanish Journal, belies its name. The
clamour ot which the above-quoted extract is a specimen is such as
might indeed be raised by the heretical British public, but never could
have been made by the faithful public of Spain. “ To the stake with
the apostates ! Let the heretics’ beards be singed! ”—that, in such a
case as that of Matamoros and his accomplices, would be the natural
cry of the Catholic Spanish people.

What would Spanisli Catholics say if a British court of justice had
condemned Drs. Manning and Newman to penal servitude for singing
Mass? Just what we ourselves should say if the thieves were to get
the upper hand in this country and send professors of moral philosophy
to the hulks tor lecturing against Communism, and maintaining the
rights ot property. That would be persecution if you like ; but there is
no persecution in punishing thieves ; still less is there any in the pun-
ishment of heretics. Heresy is worse than thievery, and a felon is less
guilty than a man who presumes to read the Bible without the leave of
his priest.

If Matamoros and his companions in guilt had not been justly
punished for an offence against the faith, if the punishment inflicted on
them in the name of religion had not been authorised by the Church, of
course the Pope, ever prompt in the denunciation of error, would have
reprehended the mistake of its infliction with the utmost alacrity. The
Holy Bather knows too well that to such acts of faitli as the condem-
nation of the Spanish Bible-readers is mainly owing the detestation in
which his paternal authority is so very generally held in these evil
tunes, to the continually extending laceration of his paternal heart.

He is also fully aware that the same causes account for the contemp-
tuous laughter with which the House of Commons is accustomed to
receive the complaints of intolerance, and the demands for power, which
are so frequently preferred by Sir George Bowyer, and the other
warriors of his Holiness’s faithful parliamentary Irish Brigade. Yet
the Pope is_ silent. Of course. How could he disapprove of the con-
signment of Matamoros to the galleys, without condemning those acts
of stronger faith, which, in ages of more glowing charity, would have
consigned that heretic and his associates to the flames ?

THE SICK MAN IN THE MONEY MARKET.

Call the Turk, if you like it, the sickest of men
And boast Frank than Mussulman wiser;

But I’d give him more rope than I would to the Pope,

To the Czar, or his neighbour, the Kaiser.

Any one of the three I should iust like to see,

On our Stock-Exchange coolly descending—

Soldier, Priest or Civilian—to ask for four million,

And find thirty ready for lending !

Though Christians can’t bear him, his eunuchs and harem,
And the muftis and moollahs, his masters,

Though financiers blame his wild issuing of caimes,

(Which is Turkish, we ’re told, for “shin-plasters”).
Though for pay his troops clamour, though brought to the
hammer,

Are the late Sultan’s wives and their jewels,

Let him just draw his bill, and Britannia still,

Will find cash for’t, in spite of renewals.

Yes, he looks very sick ... is at near his last kick—

When suddenly—Dictu mirabile !—

“ Ha ! ha ! cured in an instant! ” . . . he’s set on his legs
By Britannia’s “ aurumpotabile.”

That myst’ry so sought by the sages who wrought
For Alchemy’s mighty Arcanum—

The Elixir of Life!—of full hands here’s a strife,

Proff’ring draughts—for the sick man to drain ’em !

NUTS EOR CONSERVATIVES.

The subjoined extract from a weekly contemporary appears to assert
the right of a people to choose their form of Government for them-
selves :—

“We Lave never disguised our sympathy with the Southern States, nor our
ardent hope that they may prove victorious in this great struggle for their inde-
pendence in their own homes.”

Wliat very generous sentiments ! If it were not for the fact that
the independence of the Southern States will involve the perpetuation
of negro slavery, what true Englishman would not avow the same ?
But why limit sympathetic generosity to the Southern Confederation ?
Cannot the contemporary from whose columns the foregoing words are
taken also affirm that it has never disguised its sympathy with the
Roman people, nor its ardent hope that they likewise may prove vic-
torious in that great struggle for their independence in their own homes
which they have been so long engaged in ? No ; tor the sympathy of that
contemporary with the Southern States is something peculiar; as
appears from the continuation of the passage quoted above:—

“ Our sympathy with them is strengthened by the fact that the great Liberal
Party everywhere desires the success of their enemies.”

Take notice that the contemporary whose remarks we have been
presenting to you is the Tablet. The Romans are regarded as a very
different sort of people from the Southerners by the organ of popery.
In its estimation the latter are as different from the former as white
from black; and if the Southern negroes were in revolt against their
masters, our Popisli contemporary would probably sympathise as little
with them as it does with the Romans, and as much with their masters
as it does with the Pope ; particularly because the emancipation of
both the niggers and Romans is everywhere desired by the great
Liberal Party. Indeed we suppose the Tablet is ready to maintain
that the Romans are niggers, which amounts to no greater absurdity
than maintaining white to be black ; and that is nothing to a journal
holding the still more inconceivable dogmas which the Tablet professes.
No doubt the Tablet, in the interests ot its party, is prepared to contend
that white is black; and the affirmative of that same proposition would,
for the same purpose, be also readily voted by the representatives of
that party in the House of Commons who are banded to turn out Lord
Palmerston’s Government, to the end of reversing his foreign policy.
Oyez, oyez, oyez. Conservatives, you increase their number by every
Derbyite whom you send to Parliament!