Punch: Punch (15.1848)

40 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

THE SUNDAY BILL.

he tolerant Mr. Hindley has brought in a
Bill to restrict Sunday trading. Now
we are great advocates for Sabbath
tranquillity. A Sunday in England
may be thought to have its dullness;
but with that dullness is there not an
exceeding comfort ? It is a beautiful
pause in the moil and toil of life : and
may the day be far distant., when the
~ shopman and the labourer shall not
look towards one whole complete day
in the week, when—to use a com-
mercial phrase—he may quietly take
stock of his inner self. At this time
of day Punch need make no declaration
of his unqualitied dissent from the
gloomy tribe of the funereal Agnews.

church on Sundays: That no footman shall be employed to carry a
prayer-book for master or mistress :

" That if the sale of oranges be forbidden in the streets, the delivery
of pine-apples shall be forbidden at private houses :

" That if shrimps are not to be sold, under a penalty, at Bagnigge
Wells, neither shall lobsters be supplied at the Athenseum, the .Reform,
and other Clubs :

" That if bake-houses are closed on the Sunday, every family keeping
servants shall cook on the Saturday, that they may dine cold on the
' Sabbath.' "

THE IRISH TUTOR EOR LADIES.

We have somewhere heard or read of a Club, rejoicing in the appella-
tion of the "Devil's Own." Such a title, we should think, would be
highly appropriate 1o the Society alluded to in the subjoined paragraph,

bv the Cork Constitution :—

" At a meeting of one of the Confederate Clubs, held on Thursday evening in this
city, at which avast amount of 'base, brutal, and bloody' language was uttered,
Tuncl would not desire to have" the birds" dumb On The Sabbath, t he ! thre* vOCt,t.rol„ cheers were given for that 'pattern for all Irishwomen ' Madame
a 1 j j.i • l l 1 .1 r' ,, Le Hlanc, who eoiifes-sed in Paris that she had cut off the heads of four of the

Howera closed, the rivers stagnant, and the very greenness of the j Garde Mobile during the late insurrection."

meadows covered up in a fog of whitey-brown. And, on the other
hand, very much would 'Bunch deplore a laxity that should permit even
the acknowledged heroine of Domestic Drama to embody her bright
fireside truths at the Victoria Theatre on the evening of the seventh day.
Whilst Punch would not, with Sir Andrew, put everybody in sackcloth on

So Madame Le Blanc is to supersede Kathleen O'More and
Norah Creina, as the type of Irish womanhood. Kitty of Coleraine
is to spill, not buttermilk, but blood. The Cork Confederation Club
having proposed Madame Le Blanc as a model for iheir ladies, we

a Sunday, neither would he permit anybody to wear 1 he motley. It is good ! wonder what distinguished personage they would choose for their own
that men should take their seasonable pleasures on the seventh day : it is The great Burke, we presume—we mean the friend of Hare, not of
good that they should innocently and heartily enjoy the great First Day Johnson.

of Rest: and the poorer the man's lot, the greater his right to the en-1 But it seems that the Irish female character, according to the Con-

Joyment; for with him the hours of Sunday are doubly precious. Was
it not the wise all-tolerant Fenelon who, when a cure complained that
his parishioners would dance on a Sunday, answered him with a soul of
goodness:—"These poor people work all the week, and may if they
will, without blame, dance on Sundays. But you, Moss. Cure, and
myself—you and I, who do not work all the week—let not us dance
on Sundays."

We would, therefore, have Parliament legislate with scrupulous
tenderness towards the poor man, in this projected Sabbath enactment.
Many suspicious little meddlings have been already menaced. Some-
body in the debate threatened a crusade against the peripatetic sale of
oranges. Now, surely, there can be no harm in a Sabbath orange.
The men—mostly of the Hebrew tribe—who proffer the grateful fruit,
do not, with their net s, like the Evil One, fish for unwary souls. Neither
do we think a pint of shrimps sold, and picked, and eaten on Sundays,
are therefore shrimps from the Lake of Darkness. Ginger-pop carries
with it no alarming thunder to our conscience; and we can, with no
iread of after remorse, serenely contemplate even 1 lie foaming periwig
of an overrunning pot of ale. "Where virtue is, these are more virtuous."

Sure we are that the excellent Lord Morpeth is an advocate for
■Sunday recreation. Or wherefore—for we see the amenity published
in the papers—wherefore, by order of the Woods and Forests (by com-
mand of bounteous Panj have " upwards of two hundred chairs been
placed in Hyde Park, and a proportionate number in St. James's Park,
ior the public accommodation ?" Why, to the end that the people, to
whom Sabbath is double rest and double sweetness, may, at their ease,
contemplate the feathered pensioners of Her Majesty's Civil List. It
would be well, too—would certainly afford pleasanter matter for re-
flection—were ail the pensioners at least as useful as the swans, and
ducks, and Solan geese, and all the variety of shovellers and waders
disporting in the stream, and unconsciously drawing forth the humanities
of little children, prodigal of cake and biscuit.

It is our stubborn faith that the black swan, the noble stranger from
the Antipodes, is a source of quite as much benefit and pleasure to Her
Majesty's subjects, as the Hereditary Grand Falconer: and—not that
we desire to be taken as an authority on the fact—and doubtless hardly
costs the people more money. Indeed, if the mob of ladies and gentle-
men of the Civil List could be brought into St. James's Inclosure, and
fairly confronted with their fellow pensioners in feathers, it is our belief
that every bipes implumis would feel humiliated by a sense of uselessness
conveyed in the self-comparison. Besides, the ducks and geese on the
ornamental water—the web-footed pensioners—may in due course be
stuffed with sage and onion, and so be eaten. Now, we do not believe
that even Mr. Hume could ever think of putting the Grand Falconers
upon the spit.

To return to the immediate purpose of the Bill. It is just now one of
the measures always brought in at an advanced stage of the Session, to
make a show of business, and be duly withdrawn. We shall hear but
little more of it for the present year. It is said, however, that Mr.
Spooner has a few clauses—cut and very much dried—to propose, to
•equalise the law, whenever the subject shall be agitated, between rich
and poor. We give a few of the enactments :—

" That no lady or gentleman soever (bishops inclusive) shall ride to

federate view of its perfection, is not yet quite developed. Education
is requisite to bring out its latent virtues. " Therefore," says our
contemporary,

" It is propo-ed to establish clubs for women, in which they are to be instructed
in all the arts of assassination capable of being effectively carried out by the ' fair
daughters of Erin.'"

By way of a preliminary training to actual homicide, we should re-
commend a quiet course of pig-butchery to the tender novitiates. But
we doubt if any amount of initiation would qualify them to become
priestesses of Thuggee. We suspect that no instruction in the arts of
assassination would render the "fair daughters of Erin" more killing
than they are at present.

Driver. " Where did the old gent want to ao to, Bill ?
Conductor. " Vr, he wanted to go to Blackwall in a quarter op

an hour."

Driver. "Oh ! Did he? Then he'd better order a ballooh !! I"

New Writs.

We understand that several new Writs have been moved for by
Mr. Lawrence Levy, who seeks to procure the return of a number of
individuals whose acceptance of the hundreds has not been confined to
the Chiltern, their acceptances extending to many more hundreds than
it would be possible to enumerate.