Punch: Punch (76.1879)

48

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [February 1, 1879.

few beds, provided for the reception of doubtful cases such as the above, or of
persons insensibly drunk. Those on duty at the police-station could attend
to them under the direction of the police-surgeon, who ought invariably to be
called in to examine cases of danger or doubt, and after a few hours any doubt
in a given case would have passed away. Such an arrangement would pro-
vide the police with a means of safely detaining many of their cases of
' drunk and incapable' which cannot humanely or without danger be placed
in a cell, and which in many instances under the present system are removed
to a hospital or workhouse infirmary, where, as I know from long experience,
they not only fill up ill-spared beds, but greatly disturb the much-wished-for
rest of a large number of sick persons, coming as they often do in the middle
of the night."

Punch presents his respectful compliments to Six E. Henderson,
and begs earnestly to recommend Mr. Hill's humane suggestion to
the Police Commissioners.

MORE " HECKLING " FOR HAWARDEN.

" In response to an invitation
from us, Mr. Gladstone has
answered some questions which
it was thought would throw light
upon obscure portions of his
biography."—The Biograph.

Reasons with which it is
unnecessary to trouble our
readers induce us to believe
that all the questions which
were proposed to Mr. Glad-
stone have not been pub-
lished, and we are glad to
have the opportunity of sup-
plying the omitted queries.
They are as follows :—

Be good enough to give the
name of the street and the
number of the house in
which you were born at Li-
verpool, and to state on
which side of the street the
house stood, and whether, to
your knowledge, an enamelled
tablet has been let into the
wall (as it ought to be) to
acquaint present and future
generations with your exact
birth-place.

What was your allowance at Eton, and did you roam about the
Playing Fields revolving in your mind the first germ of the Disen-
dowment and Disestablishment of the Irish Church ?

Did you drive tandem at Oxford? Who was your "Coach" at
that University, and was his tutorial connection with you any
advantage to him when you held the reins of office ? Were you first
led to reflect on Church and State from seeing the Esquire Bedells
precede the Vice-Chancellor with their silver pokers along the High ?

When you were a Candidate for Newark in 1832, did you select
the "Clinton Arms " as your hotel because it bore the family name
of the Duke of _ Newcastle ? Were you not pleased with your
accommodation in that hostelry, and what did you give the head
waiter when you left P

When you were a Lord of the Treasury in Sir Robert Peel's
Ministrydid you frequently visit at Drayton Manor, and can you
recollect in what room you slept ? Do you remember on one occasion
lying awake "in the early, early morning," and picturing to yourself
the time when you should be Prime Minister ?

Before you accepted office as Under-Secretary of State for the
Colonies, did you make a little tour through Australia, New Zealand,
Mauritius, the Cape of Good Hope, the Bermudas, and Canada ?

When President of the Board of Trade, did you make yourself
acquainted with all the duty-paying articles then in the British tariff,
and did you devise a Memoria Technica, and hang it over your
shaving-glass, to enable you to fix these articles indelibly in your
mind?

You have been Chancellor of the Exchequer two or three times,
and you have also been Prime Minister—your opinion therefore as to
the comfort and convenience of the official residence in Downing
Street will carry great weight. Were the rooms draughty, did the
chimneys smoke, and were you ever called upon to remonstrate about
the drains ?

When you finally separated yourself from the Conservative party,
what did you say to them, and did they give you a farewell dinner ?

Were you ever solicited to aid a great metropolitan movement for
the re-establishment of Greenwich Fair, and can you remember the
reasons you adduced (on a post-card) for declining to countenance
such an agitation ?

Did you discharge a footman in 1873, and for what precise reason

was he dismissed ? Is it true that he was (on the maternal side) an
Irishman, and had his enforced retirement from your establishment
any connection with the rejection of the University Education
(Ireland) Bill ?

Was Sir Robert Walpole or Lord Liverpool your model "in
the principles, or the administrative art in politics" ?

In the event of your remaining in office in 1874, should you have
abolished the Income Tax, disestablished the Churches of England,
Wales, and Scotland, introduced Universal Suffrage (including the
females), repealed the Game Laws, swept away Primogeniture, and
bought up all the Railways, Waterworks, Gasworks, and Ceme-
teries, and converted them into so many subordinate Departments of
the State ?

Have you any "Moral antipathies " ? If so, name (in confidence)
your greatest.

Can you give an estimate (in round numbers) of the amount you
have contributed to the Post Office revenue during the last five years ?

Is it a fact that you can repeat all the works of Homer by heart
backwards, and with the omission of the alternate lines ?

ANOTHER PEG IN THE ROADWAY.

Our Flower has blossomed into a Bouquet. Not content with his
own, and Punch's solitary " pegging away " at the defective laying
of the Paddington roads—would the fault were confined to that
eminently respectable parish!—he has enlisted a phalanx of good
men and true, dwellers in the handsome houses," that look down
on Hyde Park, to take up his cry, and to memorialise the Ty-
burnian Vestry in support of it.

The Memorial is a model of temperate but plain speaking, and
close keeping to the point. It includes two counts :—

" 1. That the granite cubes for some time used in the road repairs are of
excessive size and weight.

" 2. That, even if the cubes were of proper size, the repairs are done in an
unscientific, and, consequently, extravagant manner."

Next comes the evidence in support of the first count:—

" For two months past the ratepayers have been taking active notice of the
road repairs in the parish and the materials used, and on various occasions
and in various streets granite cubes have been picked up—which can be laid
before you, if you require them—of huge size and weight, much larger than
the contract size.

"The cubes in question have not been specially selected, but are fair
samples of the bulk of the heaps from which they were taken on the roads,
whilst some have been taken from the heaps of granite cubes in the Vestry's
own stone-yard."

Then follows a statement of palpable facts, in support of count
number two:—

"The roads are not repaired after Macadam's principle—even putting
aside for the moment the size of the cubes.

" Huge layers of granite cubes many inches deep are spread over the road
that is under repair, and find their own level, filled in for the time with fine
gravel and sand. The gravel in course of time works up into mud, which has
to be carted away, and the result is, holes for water to lie in, ridges for
horses and foot passengers to trip over, and great danger to springs and
wheels."

Witness to this, all ribs, and frames, of drivers and driven, to say
nothing of horses and carriages, traversing Tyburnia.

The Memorial winds up with a fair statement of the extent of the
grievance, and—crown of all—a plain, practical, and practicable
suggestion:—

"The grievance affects all classes of society in the parish, the tradesmen's
carts and horses, the rich man's carriages and horses, the omnibus companies,
and the foot passengers. We conclude with a practical suggestion, viz. :
That the advice of a professional pupil of Macadam's should be obtained
forthwith by the Vestry, in order that the present bad system may give place
to a new and better one."

Punch need not stay to "tot" up the united ratings of the
Memorialists. He contents himself, as a frequent traveller in
Tyburnia, with echoing both the plaint and the prayer of the
Memorial, and recommending the respectable ratepayers—not the
carriage people only, but the cab and fly people as well—of other
districts intersected with long roadways—as, e.g., Belgravia and
the regions abutting on the Embankment—to go and do likewise.
If we must pay paving-rates, as we must, let them, at least, be for
the most durable and level roads. The more the contractors have
to pay for stone-breaking, the less we shall have to pay for bone-
breaking, of man and horse alike.

when the bill comes in about afghanistan.

It will be well if the " cost of pacification " can be as easily pro-
vided for as the " pacification of^Khost '"seems to have been thus far.

SW To Cobbespondbhts.—The Editor does not hold himself bound to acknowledge, return, or pay for Contributions. In no case can these be returned unless accompanied by a

stamped and directed envelope. Copies ihould be kept.