Punch: Punch (15.1848)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

83

LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S LAMENT;

or, putting the bills to bed.

Balow my Bills, lie still and sleep ;
Until next Session ye must keep,
Though Cobden chafe, and Bright upbraid
O'er measures marred, and men o'erpaid ;
Though Borough bribery grow apace,
And Ireland bare rebellion's face.

Balow my Bills, lie still and sleep;

Until next Session ye must keep.

When out of office, I began
To play the part of " Coming Man;"
I told the glorious bead-roll o'er
Of Radical Reforms in store;
But now I see, if they 're to be,
'Tis thanks to some one else, not me.

Balow my Bills, lie still and sleep ;

Until next Session ye must keep.

Lie still, my Poor Law Bills, awhile
On Bulleb's amply furnished file,
Nor get us, as your elders did,
Into a fix—nay, Fate forbid;
But yet I fear, another year
Will find our paupers still as dear.

Balow my Bills, lie still and sleep ;

Until next Session ye must keep.

We haven't pass'd—but soon we will,

I hope, our Navigation Bill;

The Colonies are in a fume,

And sore I'm work'd by Joseph Hume ;

But if he knew all I've to do,

He'd wonder any work's got through.

Balow my Bills, lie still and sleep ;

Until next Session ye must keep.

And Public Health Bill, Moepeth's care,

'Tis true ye 're somewhat thin and bare ;

But none can say ye didn't show

Our wish to please both friend and foe ;

And after all, it, doth befall

That we've pleased nobody at all.

Balow my Bills, lie still and sleep;

Until next Session ye must keep.

Parewell, farewell, thou sorest year
That ever bored a Ministere !
Too well, from all around I see
What my short epitaph would he,
(If I should walk my official chalk)—
" Too little Work and too much Talk ! "

Balow my Bills, lie still and sleep;

Until next Session ye must keep.

Suspension Acts.

It was a Question in the Assemblee Nationale whether Mb. Pboud-
hon's speech should be reported. By this it would seem that the
suppression of a Member's speech is evidently a great punishment. It
would have a great effect in the House of Commons, we think, if
several Members were punished in this way. We should like it to be
applied to Mb. Anstey—for_ hitherto only the House and the nation
have been punished with his speeches. By the bye, if Lord John
were to suspend the printing of the debates, it is a question whether more
business would not be transacted ? The Habeas Corpus Act should be
enforced against the body of reporters. As yet, so little has been done,
that we think this Session might with justice be called the ' Suspen-
sion Session."

The North-Western Engine-DTivers.

There is a little disagreement between these useful functionaries and
their employers, the latter charging the former with a desire to drive a
very hard bargain as well as a tender, and the former implying that the
latter are illustrating the old saying with reference to a certain old
gentleman driving when needs must, which is alleged to be the case in
consequence of the resignation of the experienced servants. Considering
the very powerful engine both parties have in their hands, we hope they
will have the good sense to prevent any further collision; and though
we cannot recommend, in railway matters, the system of meeting each
other half-way, we hope that they will lose as little time as possible in
getting into a train of settlement.

SINGULAR OCCURRENCE.

A few evenings ago, as a gentleman named John Russell was
quietly seated on his bench—thinking of nothing—he was assaulted by
a person named Berkeley, who, with others, carried him off his fee*",
and—as Gulliver was jammed into a marrow-bone—stuck him hard
and fast in a ballot-box. Happily, no injury was committed upon the
worthy gentleman; but there is every reason to believe that his
assailants, animated by their late success, contemplate a renewal of
their violence.

.1A< K IN Tftfc (BALLOT) BOX.

IMPROMPTU IMMORTALITY.

The Widow Cormack must, in future, take her place by the side of
Lord Byron, and exclaim, with the poet peer, or peerless poet—" I
awoke one morning, and found myself famous." The gentleman
jumping up into the air with the explosive force of a quack pill, and
shrieking out convulsively, " Ha! ha ! ha! cured in an instant!"
undergoes a tedious process compared to the celerity with which the
Widow Cormack attained a sudden renown, that would justify the
frantic shout of, " Ho! ho ! he! he ! he! immortal in a twinkling."
She went to bed one night, and waking, found herself in the pages of
history, the police in her cupboards, and Smith O'Brien in her
cabbage-bed. She had retired with her children into the arms of
Morpheus, and tumbled directly into the hands of the Constabulary;
while the King of Munster had dropped in among some of vie growing
greens of Green Erin, in the Widow's kitchen-garden. She who had
been nothing but " a poor lone widow" over night, found herself at
such a premium in the morning, that her cabbages were being cabbaged
by the crowd as curiosities, and she got a letter by an early post, from
a theatrical manager, offering her her ck*h terms, for herself and
family to appear between the first and second pieces, with a bunch of
the original cabbages in their hands, as a sample of the King of
Munster's hiding-place. Notoriety was never before achieved at such
short notice, for the mantle of Fame has fallen upon the Widow
Cormack and her family, as rapidly as if Fame kept a lot of mantles on
hand, ready made, after the manner of the dealers in the tribe of paletots
which fit everybody by fitting nobody, and hang as loosely on the
natural shape, as any lusus natures that modern tastelessness has beec
permitted to thrust upon society.