Punch (18.1850)

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

ME. ELNIGAN'S LAMENT.

he following Poem, upon an event which at present
occupies much of the public attention in Ireland, has
been sent to us by a gentleman connected witli the
Knife Board of Dublin Castle :—

0 Tim, did you hear of thim Saxons,
And read what the peepers repoort ?

They 're goan to recal the Liffinant,

And shut up the Castle and Coort!
Our desolate counthry of Oireland,

They're bint, the blagyards, to desthroy,
And now having murdthered our counthry,

They 're goin to kill the Viceroy,
Dear boy ;

'Twas he was our proide and our joy !

And will we no longer behould him,

Surrounding his carriage in throngs,
As he weaves his cocked-hat from the windies,

And smiles to his bould aide-de-congs ?

1 liked for to see the young haroes,

All shoining wrh sthripes and with stars,
A horsing about in the Phaynix,
And winking the girls in the cyars,

Like Mars,
A smokin' their poipes and cigyars.

Dear Mitchell exoiled to Bermudies,

Your beautiful oilids you'll ope,
And there '11 be an abondance of croyin

Prom O'Brine at the Keep of Good Hope,
When they read of this news iu the peepers,

Acrass the Atlantical wave,
That the last of the Oirish Liftinints

Of the oisland of Seents has tuck lave.
God save

The Queen—she should betther behave,

And what's to become of poor Dame Sthreet

And who'll ait the puffs and the tarts,
Whin the Coort of imparial splindor

Prom Doblin's sad city departs ?
And who'll have the fiddlers and pipers,

When the deuce of a Coort there remains ;
And where '11 be the bucks and the ladies,

To hire the Coort-shuits and the thrains ?
In sthrains,

It's thus that ould Erin complains !

There's Counsellor Flanagan's leedy,

'Twas she in the Coort didn't fail,
And she wanted a plinty of popplin,

Por her dthress, and her flounc, and her tail;
She bought it of Misthiiess 0'Grady,

Eight shillings a yard tabinet,
But now that the Coort is concluded,

The divvle a vard will she get;
I bet,

Bedad, that she wears the old set.

There's Surgeon O'Toole and Miss Leahy.

They'd daylings at Madam O'Riggs' ;
Each year at the dthrawing-room sayson,

They mounted the neatest of wigs.
When Spring, with its buds and its dasies,

Comes out in her beauty and bloom,
Thim tu '11 never think of new jasies,

Because there is no dthrawing-room, .
Por whom

They'd choose the expence to ashume.

There's Alderman Toad and his lady,

'Twas they gave the Clart and the Poort,
And the poine-apples, turbot.s, and lobsters,

To feast the Lord Liftinint's Coort.
But now that the quality's goin,

I warnt that the aiting will stop,
And you '11 get at the Alderman's teeble

The devil a bite or a dthrop,
Or chop,

And the butcher may shut up his shop.

Yes, the grooms and the ushers are goin,

And his Lordship, the dear honest man,
And the Duchess, his eemiable leedy,

And Corrt, the bould Connellan,
And little Lord Hyde and the childfhren,

And the Chewter and Governess tu ;
And the servants are packing their boxes,—

Oh, murther, but what shall I due
Without you ?

0 Meery, with oi's of the blue !

RED-COAT CONSTABLES.

Mr. Stanford, M.P.—Most Profound—of Reading, opposes reduc-
tion in the army; as he conceives that Manchester, Birmingham, and
Liverpool, have especial need of well-filled barracks. If foreign laurels
are not to be gathered, there may be a good home crop won upon
English soil. At Liverpool, for instance, there is the Pinancial Reform
Association, that requires military watchfulness. With a hundred
pen-knives whetted to scratch out certain items in the civil list, such
as thousands per annum for Hereditary Falconers and Masters of
Buckhounds, we must have bayonets continually fixed to overawe and
repress the revolutionary movement.

At Birmingham, there is Joseph Sturge with many disciples,
preaching Universal Peace, advocating pestilent doctrines that will
render the finest parks of artillery only so much old iron;—Joseph and
his associates alone demand the vigilance of a few battalions.

Then, again, there is the great Preehold Movement. Every man
treasonably bent upon purchasing for himself as much earth as will
grow him a vote, is a social enemy—a hater of the franchise as it is—
and requires at least a couple of red-coats to have an eye upon nim.
More; let us consider the helpless condition of the judges without the
aid of the military: " The sentences of the judges could not be put
into execution merely by a small police force." This is very evident;
most manifest from the many abortive attempts lately made to release
felons from prison vans, and 1o carry off murderers even from the very
scaffold; attempts only frustrated by the sudden presence of the
military power, that, sword in hand, scattered the evil-doers.

" When honourable members alleged that the people were calling for reductions in our
military establishments, he asked them what they meant by ' the people ?' Did they
mean to include, under the term, pickpockets, thieves, and that large body, 70,000 in
the metropolis, who were called 1 the dangerous classes ?' If so, he could easily account
for the demand."

Very good—very wise, Mr. Stanford. To ask for a reduced army
power is to have five fingers itching for the property of our neighbours.
To object to the extravagant outlay upon the household troops is to
be a man marked "dangerous."

But it is clear that the judges are of little use without the prospect
of military co-operation. The ermine would be defiled by popular con-
tempt, unless protected by scarlet serge. This is the reasoning of
Mr. Stanford—this a specimen of the reasoning animal too often
dubbed M.P., and sent to weary honest people, and fill with froth the
morning papers.

However, from the debate we extract one delicious drop of comfort.
Colonel Sibthorp said—

" Allusion had been made to the possibility of outbreaks by anarchical factions : if it
should be found necessary for the preservation of the peace and dignity of this country,
he should be prepared to act against any attempt which the Radicals might make." '

There is a blacksmith dwelling at Lincoln who is prepared—at only
one day's notice—to transmute the Colonel's well-known dagger of lath
into a broadsword of most heroic temper. The funds are always safe,
for is not Sibthorp ever ready P

BENEVOLENT MACHINES.

Some experiments which would have highly interested a Boshman or
Malay warrior were tried last week in the marshes at Woolwich.
They were carried on, says the Morning Post,

" With sheUs, the invention of Mr. Groves of Birmingham, having for their object,
when burst among troops, to scatter a quantity of prepared material, which would set
their clothes on fire, and destroy the enemy by that means."

A considerable improvement, this notion, upon that of poisoned
arrows! It is difficult, however, to conceive how a shell could set on
fire any clothes but petticoats, and how, therefore, it could be available
against any troops but Amazons, or, perhaps, Highlanders. In the
present instance, the shells all burst at the mouth of the howitzer
without igniting even the turpentine, or whatever it was that they were
to fling about. We had a mistaken notion that, in civilized warfare all
such weapons had been exploded long ago. Not so, it seems ■ and next
perhaps, it will be proposed that we should fight with vitriol and
aqua-fortis