Punch (9.1845)

IT

Hodge and family, may, to avoid the pinch of famine, just take a pinch of powder of curry. "Potatoes have
failed in England "—cries the head—" but, is there not balm in Gilead,—doth not India send her spices \ m
Should our ploughmen at any time lack the luxury of onions, is it not a consoling matter to know that they
may, instead, eat nutmegs?—for are not nutmegs " comfortable to the stomach V

But the New Year—delegating Puuc/t as spokesman— gives other counsel. Royal Cambridge saith there-
is no potato blight; then let His Royal Highness— taking counsel with kindred philanthropists—prove the
value of his golden syllables! The hardness of the times needs great examples of beneficence and goodness.
And, therefore, in our mind's eye, do we already behold the agents of Royal Cambridge taking ship for
Portugal—where Richmond says good potatoes most do congregate—to freight a hundred argosies with,
the million's daily food. Let Norfolk think not to curry the bowels of the poor—to tk rack their sides with
pinches" of oriental powder—but let him and all of his order band together to blight the blight ; and
this they may do, not with " lime " and '* pounded charcoal," as professors learnedly do counsel,—but with
gold-dust; nothing but gold-dust ! We beg pardon : a few layers of Bank-notes will do just as well.

It is well—it is admirable—for professors to lecture. Musical is the voice of Buckland—dulcet and wise
' the discourse of Playfair. But the New Year needs lectures of another sort: it calls to all to assist Royal
I Cambridge in his proof that the potato blight is a wicked flam ; and this they can do, by a few magical words,,
written on Bank cheques.

Such is the advice of Punch. Let all, according to their means, combine—and it will be a fine thing for Old
Eighteen Forty Six to say, when, hoary and worn out, he passes from this world to his fellows in Eternity—
" My Brethren, Cambridge spoke the words of truth. In my time the Poor felt no Potato Blight ! "

And so, Readers, though the fight of Eighteen Forty Six may be tough and hot, let us begin it—as Conde
once opened the trenches—with nothing harsher than pleasant music. But let ours be the world's music—music
that should circle the earth with divinest melody—music that is the enduring hopeful soul, dwelling in the old, old?
. ayllables—

ffinxv (Efjnstmas, ant) a ^appp i^cto Year!"