Punch (61.1871)

176

PUNCH, OR THE LONTDON CHARIVARI.

[October 28, 1871.

A STUDY OF OMNIBUS LIFE.

Affable Person (entering Omnibus). " I see theke is Room for One More on either Side, Ladies and Gentlemen,—will
either Side kindly make Room for Me? I have no Preference !"

[Stolid determination on either side to let the other side have the benefit of Affable Person. Complete unconsciousness, on both sides,
of Affable Person's existence. Omnibus goes on. Embarrassing situation of Affable Person.

THE SECRET TREATY.

The Public Mind is now exercised to the utmost by the revelation
that has been made of the Secret Treaty between certain Great
Peers of England (pillars of the State), and the Leaders of the
Trades Unions, the International, and the Sartors of the Rue Tooley.
If it can be exercised more than to the utmost, this also has been
effected by the mystery which still envelopes the same transaction.

We have felt it our duty, without the slightest regard to the
ordinary delicacies and proprieties of life, to institute an investiga-
tion into the affair. Etiquette is well in its way, but salus populi
suprema lex. We have not hesitated to avail ourselves of all means
of obtaining facts, and at those who fling at us the insulting words
"key-holes," "eaves-droppers," "spies," and "bribes," we
haughtily fling back the condensed expression of our contempt, com-
prised in the dissyllable indicative of vegetable productions con-
served in vinegar.

There is no doubt, unhappily, that a project of so black a kind
that no word borrowed from the "oil and colourman" (who is
stated by Mr. Landor to supply our fine writers with epithets)
can fittingly characterise its Cimmerian darkness, was set on foot—
if projects have feet—early in the recess. Certain of the Peerage,
whom we should name but for a reason which it is needless to give,
had resolved upon striking a great blow, which should at once
demolish Mr. Disraeli, dish the Liberals, and clear the way for
aristo-democratic institutions. Negotiations were opened with the
chiefs of the working-classes, and Mr. Odger was invited to Hat-
field, where terms would have been made at once, but for the pro-
vidential accident that the revolutionary chief, on the first day of
his visit, _ was so terrified by the roaring of the dinner-gong, an
aristocratic institution with which he was unacquainted, that he cut
across the fields to Barnet, and could in nowise be induced to return
to the haughty mansion of the Salisburies. Sic nos servavit
Apollo.

But other ambassadors met, and the dark business was proceeded
with. We do not profess to have all the details, but this we know. The
mawkish idea of mere moral force was eschewed with scorn. Mr. Dis-
raeli was to be placed onboard an American steamer, and furnished
only with a letter of introduction to Professor Goldwin Smith.
It was to be signified to Her Majesty, and the Princes, that the air
of Scotland was absolutely necessary to them until further notice,
and Mr. Grant Duff was charged with the execution of that decree.
The difficulty was with Mr. Gladstone, who might escape to
Hawarden Castle, fortify it, and proclaim a general rising of Welsh
Dissenters. A wily plot was therefore devised. He was to be in-
formed that some highly superior old China (of which he is noto-
riously fond) was to be had at a low figure near Soho Square. When
there, he was to be lured into the Soho Bazaar, and cruelly abandoned
to a melancholy fate. Mr. Bradlatjgh was to seize the Tower,
and to receive and incarcerate there all other public men who might
refuse adhesion to the new order of things. A Commune was to be
proclaimed, with Lord Salisbury as Protector, Mr. Potter as
President, and Mr. Peter Taylor as Patrou, with equal powers,
and one to be a quorum. The Army was to be sent off in the Navy,
to assist the Spanish Internationals and Republicans in putting down
Monarchy in the Peninsula.

The field thus cleared, the new Government was to set to work at
once. The House of Lords was to exist for the present, but only as
a Debating Society. The House of Commons was to be dissolved,
and it was to be absolute disqualification for future membership for
any man to have sat in any Parliament, or said, in the hearing of
two witnesses, that he thought of standing. Thus, "new blood"
was to be obtained. But no man was to be eligible unless he could
read with some facility. Lord Salisbury, who thinks that people
are over-educated, objected to this restriction, but it was insisted on
by the artisans, on the ground that a politician of the humbler sort
could know nothing of politics except what he learned from the
Beehive and Reynolds's Newspaper.

Since the Gunpowder Plot, never was a fearful conspiracy more