Punch: Punch (11.1846)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHABIVATU.

39

THE SNOBS OF ENGLAND.

et one of themselves.

CHAP. XXI.—ARE THERE ANY WHIG SNOBS?

oettjnatelt this is going to be quite a little chap-
ter. I am Dot going, like Thomas of Finsbury,
to put ugly questions to Government, or obstruct
in any way the march nf the Great Liberal
Administration. The best thing we can do is
not to ask questions at all, but to trust the
Whigs implicitly, and rely on their superior
wisdom. They are wiser than we are. A
kind Providence ordained that they should
govern us, and endowed them with universal
knowledge. Other people change their opin-
ions . they nover do. For instance, Peel
avows that his opinions on the Corn Laws
have gone right round—the Whigs have
never changed ; they have always held the Free-Trade doctrines ;
they have always been wise and perfect, We didn't know
it : but it's the fact—Lord John says so. And the great
Whig chiefs go down to their constituents, and congratulate them-
selves and the world that Commercial Freedom is the law of the
Empire, and bless Heaven for creating Whigs to expound this
great truth to the world. Free Trade ! Heaven bless you ! the Whigs
invented Free Trade—and everything else that ever has been invented.
Some day or other—when the Irish Church goes by the board ; when,
perhaps, the State Church follows it; when Household Suffrage
becomes an acknowledged truth ; when Education actually does
become National ; when even the Five Points of Thomas of Finsbury
come to be visible to the naked eye—you will see the Whigs always
were advocates for Household Suffrage ; that they invented National
Education ; that they were the boyg who settled the Church Question ;
and that they had themselves originated the Five Points, of which
Feabgus O'Connor was trying to take the credit. Where there's
Perfection there can't be Snobbishness. The Whigs have known and
done—know and do—will know and do everything.

And again, you can't expect reasonably to find many Snobs among
them. There are so few of them. A fellow who writes a book about
the Aristocracy of England, and calls himself Hampden, Junior, (and
who is as much like John Hampden as Mr. Punch is like the Apollo
Beltidere), enumerates a whole host of trades, and names of English-
men who have been successful in them ; and finds that the aristocracy
has produced—no good tin-men, let us say, or lawyers, or tailors, or
artists, or divines, or dancers on the tight-rope, or persons of other
callings ; whereas, out of the people have sprung numbers more or
less who have distinguished themselves in the above professions. The
inference of which is, that the aristocracy is the inferior, the people
the superior race. This is rather hard of Hampden, Junior, and not
quite a fair argument against the infamous and idiotic aristocracy ;
for it is manifest that a Lord cannot play upon the fiddle, or paint
pictures by a natural gift and without practice ; that men adopt pro-
fessions in order to live, and if they have large and comfortable means
of livelihood are, not uncommonly, idle. The sham Hampden, I say,
does not consider that their lordships have no call to take upon them-
selves the exercise of the above-named professions ; and above all,
omits to mention that the people are as forty thousand to one to the
nobility ; and hence, that the latter could hardly be expected to pro-
duce so many distinguished characters as are to be found in the ranks
of the former.

In like manner (I am willing to confess the above illustration is
confoundedly long, but in a work on Snobs, a Radical Snob may have
a passing word as well as another), I say, there can't be many Snobs
among Whigs ; there are so very few Whigs among men.

I take it, there are not above one hundred real downright live
Whigs in the world—some five-and-twenty, we will say, holding
office ; the remainder ready to take it. You can't expect to find
many of the sort for which we are seeking in such a small company.
How rare it is to meet a real acknowledged Whig ' Do you know
one ? Do you know what it is to be a Whig ? I can understand a
man being anxious for this measure or that, wishing to do away with
the sugar duties, or the corn duties, or the Jewish disabilities, or what
you will ; but in that case, if Peel will do my business and get rid of
the nuisance for me, he answers my purpose just as well as anybody
else with any other name. I want my house set in order, my room

made clean ; I do not make particular inquiries about the broom and
the dust-pan.

To be a Whig you must be a reformer—as much or little of this as
you like—and something more. You must believe not only that the
Corn-Laws must be repealed, but that the Whigs must be in office ;
not only that Ireland must be tranquil, but that the Whigs must be in
Downing Street : if the people will have reforms, why of course you
can't help it; but remember, the Whigs are to have the credit. I
believe that the world is the Whigs, and that everything they give us
is a blessing. When Lord John the other day blessed the people at
Guildhall, and told us all how the Whigs had got the Corn-Bill for us,
I declare I think we both believed it. It wasn't Cob-den and Villters
and the people that got it—it was the Whigs, somehow, that octroyed
the measure to us.

They are our superiors, and that's the fact. There is what Thomas
of Finsbury almost blasphemously called " A Whig Bodge"—and
beats all other dodges. I'm not a Whig myself, (perhaps it is as
unnecessary to say so, as to say I am not King Pippin in a golden
coach, or King Hudson, or Miss Burdett Cotttts,) I'm not a Whig ;
but, Oh, how I should like to be one !

9£.ttraortrinat£ Olonftsstcm.

We now and then hear instances of people going and giving them-
selves in charge for some great crime or other which they have never
committed ; but this kind of* self-accusation is frequently the result of
dining out, and the conscience gets cleared by a bottle of soda water
and an appearance before a magistrate. It is seldom, however, that
we find a person issuing printed placards in which he announces him-
self to have been guilty of some offence, of which he is completely
innocent. An auctioneer's posting bill from Gravesend, however, com-
mences in the following startling manner :—

" SALE BY AUCTION.
No. 4, Edwin Street, Gravesend, the very House where the
MAIS, BAGS

WEBB BECBETBD WHKK

THE GRAVESEND POST-OFFICE

WAS BOBBED, BT

MR. EVERSFIELD,

On Monday, Juxt 13th, 1846. &c. &c."

Fortunately for this gentleman, it is a notorious fact that he did not
rob the Gravesend Post-office on the day he alleges himself to have
done so, for the establishment was not robbed at all on that day, nor
has there been any robbery except one, for which the real delinquent
has already been tried and sentenced to transportation. It is, we pre-
sume, with the view of attracting public attention to the sale that the
auctioneer has announced himself to be the robber of the Gravesend
Post-office, a charge for which there is no foundation whatever. We
think this is going a little too far in" zeal for his employers, and we
recommend Mr. Everseield not to venture too far in this style of puff-
ing, which, if it should happen to be taken literally by those un-
acquainted with the respectability of his character, might do him
serious injury.

THE BOOKING- FAN.—A COOL CONTRIVANCE.