Punch (58.1870)

January 15, 1870.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

11

A SLIGHT MISTAKE,

consequent on the fashionable rage foe tartans.
Tipsy Recruit. " Hullo, Cumkad ! Wha' Resgh'ment do you B'loxo to ? "

THE VALUE OE " PROPUTTY."

The celebrated Lord Chesterfield, clever as he may have been in some
respects, was obtuse in others. He had not the sense to appreciate the pith of
our good old proverbs, and instructed his son, whose stupidity needed no enhance-
ment, that they were vulgar. He would have turned his finicking nose up at the
wise and venerable saying, that one man may steal a horse whilst another must
not look over a hedge. This, indeed, is now seldom quoted, having fallen into
disuse since horse-stealing was made no longer a hanging matter. Horse-stealing
is still, however, punishable with a degree of comparative severity quite sufficient
to render that adage about it intelligible.

At the Middlesex Sessions, the other day, Thomas Evans, aged 38, pleaded guilty
to stealing a horse, value £5. He was sentenced to seven years'penal servitude.
'On the previous day another thief, who had pleaded not guilty, Elizabeth Barry,
aged 39, was adjudged, at the Berkshire Epiphany Quarter Sessions, to fifteen
calendar months' imprisonment with hard labour. The difference between these
two thieves was essentially this. Thomas Evans had stolen a horse; Elizabeth
Barry had stolen a child. To be sure, the man was proved to be an habitual
criminal; but then, on the other hand, the woman was a nurse in the service of the
gentleman whose child she stole. Thus she was guilty of robbing her employer,
and she robbed him of an object which he valued indefinitely more than he could
have prized any horse: moreover she had, according to evidence, ill-used the child,
and all this with malice prepense. And she was liable to seven years' penal ser-
vitude too. But the child could not be assessed at the specific value of £5, and
the horse could. To that difference between the two cases corresponded the
difference between the sentences of fifteen months' imprisonment with hard
labour, and seven years' penal servitude. So the dear old proverb which implies
the relative atrocity of horse-stealing is no anachronism. Eor your horse is that
thing to the sound of whose name he canters, as Tennyson's Northern Farmer
says, " Proputty, Proputty, Proputty," marketable " proputty," and your child
isn't. Judges and Justices think more of " proputty " than even what it is thought
of by the Northern Farmer.

A Better Reading.—A Contented Mind is a Continual Bore.

BOB LOWE'S NEW YEAR'S GIET.

Who's that knocking at the door ?
'Tis I, says Robeet Lowe,
With the bill of what you owe,
Eor house and for assessed tax,
And income-tax, that best tax—
'Tis so charmingly elastic,
So pliant and so plastic,
And falls upon so many;
'Tis a million to the penny—
Then inspection I invite
That your licences are right—
Eor keeping, if you can,
Dogs and arms, and trap and ma-n,

So no wonder I am knocking at the door.

There used be two knockings at the door:

In April and September,

As you probably remember,

The collector used to sack,

For Lord knows how far back—

Eor traps that you had dropped

Arms on plate that you had popped,

Dogs that had cut and run,

And flunkeys that had gone,

Eor which to your disgust,

Charge they did, and pay you must—

And if you didn't kick

The man out pretty quick.

You felt you'd like to do it,

If at law you'd not to rue it.

In the aggravating day—

Now happily past away—
When they knocked twice at the door '.

Now, when / knock at the door,
'Tis on licence, where, contest,
Stand dogs, arms, traps, and trie rest;
For your income-tax and eke
Your house-tax 1 've to seek,
And from the New Year's day
Rates and taxes beg you '11 pay,
In accents bland and winning,
For the year that is beginning.
And you must feel, if one axes
For assessed and income taxes,
'Tis impossible to do so
In a way that should suit you so,
While it certainly suits me,
And Her Majesty's Treasurie—

And that's how / knock at the door.

True, this year there's rather more
To pay than may be pleasant
In bad times like the present:
For this year I must combine
Taxes for 1, 8, 6, 9—
With the licences you've bought
For 1, 8, 7,. 0.
Which certainly appears
Like paying for two years
And is what it doth appear-
But it's only for this year :
And you will not be so done
In 1, 8, 7, 1.

For then we shall be straight—
The year's back with the year's weight—
And you will not have to pay
Two years' taxes in one day—
When next year I come knocking at the door.

Death " Sans Phrase."

Tropmann, the Pantin murderer, has teen thought, even
by a French jury, too bad to admit of " extenuating circum-
stances " in r.heir verdict. This settles his place in the annals
of murder. Even his advocate could find no better defence
for him, than that he was too bad to behead—and ought
to be shut up, as we shut up tigers, in a cage out of
harm's way to others. He is not too much of man, but too
little of man—being evidently a brute—and a dangerous
brute too—one to be " stamped out" of life, as mad dogs are.