DOI issue:
July to December, 1851
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16608#0024
12
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
will be too bad if America is frequented as a School for English Bunglars,
where the use of the .Revolver is taught free of expense.
It is growing late, and it is as much as we can do to discern objects
distinctly. But the cries of a child attract our attention to the Amazon
Statue, and there we discover a young gentleman, in feathers, who has
lost his maternal parent. The Police take him up tenderly, ana,
doubtlessly, to-morrow, we shall read an advertisement like the
toliowing :—
FOUND yesterday, near the Amazon Statue, a Young Child, in pink Hat and
red Feathers, and who answers to the name of " Bobby." He had in his possession
lit the time he was found, a straw rattle in one hand, and a piece of gingerbread in the
other. Any one giving full particulars to the Police, Prince's Gate, as to the ownership
of th« Child, may have it instantly restored to them.
N.B. It is urgently requested that the Child may be removed as soon as possible,
as he has done nothing but cry since he was taken.
THE THIEVES' KITCHEN AND THE CUSTOM
HOUSE.
The subjoined Petition has been laid on the table of the House of
Commons by Mr. Punch:—
The Petition of William, otherwise Bill Dolly, otherwise Nix,
otherwise Fake, and commonly called the Artist, and others,
Humbly Sheweth,
That vour petitioners belong to a class of persons of highly respectable
exterior, whose character, from personal acquaintance, can be vouched
for by Her Majesty's police.
That the body of well-dressed and decently-conducted individuals
whereof your petitioners are members, are dependent for their sub-
sistence on their manual dexterity applied in relieving Her Majesty's
subjects at large of proprietary encumbrances by a peculiar process of
extraction, and conveyance or transference.
That your petitioners thus levy on the subjects of Her Majesty a
species of contributions somewhat of the nature of taxes, and differing
from them only in the circumstance of being generally gathered without
being felt.
That when any objection is made to the said contributions, levied, as
aforesaid, by your said petitioners, an appeal lies to the nearest magis-
trate, who usually disposes of your petitioners' case by a very summary
process of justice,—if justice that award can be called which usually
inflicts much laborious exertion, and other severe hardships on your
petitioners.
That there is another class of persons not at all superior to your
petitioners in respectability, and who cultivate a similar but a less in-
offensive branch of industry • such persons being connected in divers
official capacities with Her Majesty's Board of Customs.
That the persons in question are wont and accustomed to seize and
take various and sundry goods, chattels, and merchandize, in excess of
their warrant as defined by statute : tjhat is to say, after the manner of
your petitioners: only that they, the said persons, very frequently make
captures and seizures enormously larger than your petitioners ever
make—the value of the said captures and seizures amounting in many
instances to thousands of pounds.
That whereas a mistake made by your petitioners in the abstraction
of a silk handkerchief, worth but a few shillings, renders them amen-
able to the immediate jurisdiction of a police-officer, commonly entailing
on them very unpleasant consequences, those other persons, should
they commit (as they continually do) a like error in the matter of a case
of goods, valued at from £500, are not capable of being sued at all,
except by a most expensive process, terminating in an action in the
Court of Exchequer; insomuch that those said other persons are practi-
cally protected, to a great extent, from the mere necessity of refunding.
lour petitioners therefore pray that the same protection which is
enjoyed by the said persons, namely, the officials of Her Majesty's
Board of Customs, may be extended to your petitioners, to screen them,,
in like manner, from the consequences of unfortunate mistakes in the
exercise of their vocation.
And your petitioners, who, in the vulgar tongue, are described as
pickpockets and the swell mob, will ever prig.
THE UNCOMPROMISING PRIESTHOOD.
"My very dear Sir,
" The Arch Deceiver has been this week—to use a homely
phrase—' at it again.' His organs, the newspapers, now state that
the suit of Metairie v. Wiseman has been compromised by the
division of M. Carre's bequest of £7000 to the Roman Catholic chapel
and school of St. Aloysius at Somers Town, in the proportion of
£4000 to the testator's next of kin, and £3000 to the charity. You, my
very dear Mr. Punch, do not require to be told that our uncompro-
mising Church never compromises anything, nor admits of any com-
promise on the part of her clergy. The foul Fiend, by a forged report
of a lawsuit, which, by a delusion similar to that produced by the elec-
tro-biologists, he had contrived to foist into the journals, endeavoured
to make the public believe that old M. Carre had left his £7000 to the
Church, away from his relatives, because he was frightened into doing
so on his deathbed by the menaces of a priest. The phantom of a
compromise has been conjured up by the Demon, in order to exhibit
the reverend defendants as trying to make the best of a very bad job.
But the truth shall be told, and the Evil One put to shame.
"The fact, then, is, that M. Carre made his will, bequeathing his
wealth to the pious uses above named when in robust health and spirits,
being at the time in the general habit of consuming two pounds and
a half of rump-steak daily, except on Fridays and other days of fasting
and abstinence. This was satisfactorily proved in evidence on the
trial, and a verdict was of course given for the holy men, who, so far
from terrifying the dying philanthropist (not miser, as he has been
slanderously termed) into leaving the bulk of his money for ecclesias-
tical purposes, actually persuaded him to devise a good round sum to
his relatives, whom he would otherwise have cut off with a shilling.
To falsify a law-report may seem beyond the power even of the Prince
of Darkness; but what is that to the perversion of whole chapters of
history, by which, for example, he has palmed off on Protestants the
acts and character of the sanguinary Bess as those of the good Queen
Molly ? just as he might occasion the fictions of Munchausen to be
ascribed to the same author as the plain unvarnished tales of
" Verax."
STARVED-OUT AMBASSADORS.
Governments guilty of extravagance have been subject to so much
cutting up, that cutting down has become a recognised branch ol
administrative policy. There is, however, a good deal of tact required
to leave in-tact those expenses which are for the public good, and
diminish those that exist to the public detriment.
There can be no doubt that the reductions in our diplomatic establish-
ments are very wholesome; and though we should not wish to see our
diplomatic relations reduced to very poor relations, a good deal may yet
be done—or, rather, undone—in this department of our outlay. Our
Ambassador to Paris, Lord Normanby, who likes to do things on a
liberal scale, has undergone a reduction of income which may, as hinted
by Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons, lead to some curtail-
ment of the dinners that a certain class of the English in Paris expect
to be invited to.
We don't see that the dignity of England is enhanced by the in-
dulgence of a few travelling gourmands, and we are glad, therefore,
that the country will be spared the expense, and the Ambassador the
trouble, of entertaining them. We do not, however, wish to see the
Marquis of Normanby, or any other Ambassador, cut down to an
inconveniently low figure, which would prevent him from cutting any
figure at all; and we will take Lord Palmerston's word for it, that
since the Republic has thrown Paris so thoroughly out of luck, thert
has been more luxe than ever. Of course, when in France, the
Ambassador must do as France does, and it must require a large
amount of English gold to keep pace with the French Capital.
Lenten Entertainment at the Mansion House.
Mr. Punch begs to offer his Puseyite friends his condolence on the
circumstance that the Lord Mayor gave, the other day, a grand dinner
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and several other
prelates, helped to eat. Punch would console his genuflective readers
by the suggestion that one of these days we may rejoice in a Tractarian
Lord Mayor—especially should the civic chair be filled by a tallow-
chandler—who, instead of splendid banquets, will give magnificent fasts.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
will be too bad if America is frequented as a School for English Bunglars,
where the use of the .Revolver is taught free of expense.
It is growing late, and it is as much as we can do to discern objects
distinctly. But the cries of a child attract our attention to the Amazon
Statue, and there we discover a young gentleman, in feathers, who has
lost his maternal parent. The Police take him up tenderly, ana,
doubtlessly, to-morrow, we shall read an advertisement like the
toliowing :—
FOUND yesterday, near the Amazon Statue, a Young Child, in pink Hat and
red Feathers, and who answers to the name of " Bobby." He had in his possession
lit the time he was found, a straw rattle in one hand, and a piece of gingerbread in the
other. Any one giving full particulars to the Police, Prince's Gate, as to the ownership
of th« Child, may have it instantly restored to them.
N.B. It is urgently requested that the Child may be removed as soon as possible,
as he has done nothing but cry since he was taken.
THE THIEVES' KITCHEN AND THE CUSTOM
HOUSE.
The subjoined Petition has been laid on the table of the House of
Commons by Mr. Punch:—
The Petition of William, otherwise Bill Dolly, otherwise Nix,
otherwise Fake, and commonly called the Artist, and others,
Humbly Sheweth,
That vour petitioners belong to a class of persons of highly respectable
exterior, whose character, from personal acquaintance, can be vouched
for by Her Majesty's police.
That the body of well-dressed and decently-conducted individuals
whereof your petitioners are members, are dependent for their sub-
sistence on their manual dexterity applied in relieving Her Majesty's
subjects at large of proprietary encumbrances by a peculiar process of
extraction, and conveyance or transference.
That your petitioners thus levy on the subjects of Her Majesty a
species of contributions somewhat of the nature of taxes, and differing
from them only in the circumstance of being generally gathered without
being felt.
That when any objection is made to the said contributions, levied, as
aforesaid, by your said petitioners, an appeal lies to the nearest magis-
trate, who usually disposes of your petitioners' case by a very summary
process of justice,—if justice that award can be called which usually
inflicts much laborious exertion, and other severe hardships on your
petitioners.
That there is another class of persons not at all superior to your
petitioners in respectability, and who cultivate a similar but a less in-
offensive branch of industry • such persons being connected in divers
official capacities with Her Majesty's Board of Customs.
That the persons in question are wont and accustomed to seize and
take various and sundry goods, chattels, and merchandize, in excess of
their warrant as defined by statute : tjhat is to say, after the manner of
your petitioners: only that they, the said persons, very frequently make
captures and seizures enormously larger than your petitioners ever
make—the value of the said captures and seizures amounting in many
instances to thousands of pounds.
That whereas a mistake made by your petitioners in the abstraction
of a silk handkerchief, worth but a few shillings, renders them amen-
able to the immediate jurisdiction of a police-officer, commonly entailing
on them very unpleasant consequences, those other persons, should
they commit (as they continually do) a like error in the matter of a case
of goods, valued at from £500, are not capable of being sued at all,
except by a most expensive process, terminating in an action in the
Court of Exchequer; insomuch that those said other persons are practi-
cally protected, to a great extent, from the mere necessity of refunding.
lour petitioners therefore pray that the same protection which is
enjoyed by the said persons, namely, the officials of Her Majesty's
Board of Customs, may be extended to your petitioners, to screen them,,
in like manner, from the consequences of unfortunate mistakes in the
exercise of their vocation.
And your petitioners, who, in the vulgar tongue, are described as
pickpockets and the swell mob, will ever prig.
THE UNCOMPROMISING PRIESTHOOD.
"My very dear Sir,
" The Arch Deceiver has been this week—to use a homely
phrase—' at it again.' His organs, the newspapers, now state that
the suit of Metairie v. Wiseman has been compromised by the
division of M. Carre's bequest of £7000 to the Roman Catholic chapel
and school of St. Aloysius at Somers Town, in the proportion of
£4000 to the testator's next of kin, and £3000 to the charity. You, my
very dear Mr. Punch, do not require to be told that our uncompro-
mising Church never compromises anything, nor admits of any com-
promise on the part of her clergy. The foul Fiend, by a forged report
of a lawsuit, which, by a delusion similar to that produced by the elec-
tro-biologists, he had contrived to foist into the journals, endeavoured
to make the public believe that old M. Carre had left his £7000 to the
Church, away from his relatives, because he was frightened into doing
so on his deathbed by the menaces of a priest. The phantom of a
compromise has been conjured up by the Demon, in order to exhibit
the reverend defendants as trying to make the best of a very bad job.
But the truth shall be told, and the Evil One put to shame.
"The fact, then, is, that M. Carre made his will, bequeathing his
wealth to the pious uses above named when in robust health and spirits,
being at the time in the general habit of consuming two pounds and
a half of rump-steak daily, except on Fridays and other days of fasting
and abstinence. This was satisfactorily proved in evidence on the
trial, and a verdict was of course given for the holy men, who, so far
from terrifying the dying philanthropist (not miser, as he has been
slanderously termed) into leaving the bulk of his money for ecclesias-
tical purposes, actually persuaded him to devise a good round sum to
his relatives, whom he would otherwise have cut off with a shilling.
To falsify a law-report may seem beyond the power even of the Prince
of Darkness; but what is that to the perversion of whole chapters of
history, by which, for example, he has palmed off on Protestants the
acts and character of the sanguinary Bess as those of the good Queen
Molly ? just as he might occasion the fictions of Munchausen to be
ascribed to the same author as the plain unvarnished tales of
" Verax."
STARVED-OUT AMBASSADORS.
Governments guilty of extravagance have been subject to so much
cutting up, that cutting down has become a recognised branch ol
administrative policy. There is, however, a good deal of tact required
to leave in-tact those expenses which are for the public good, and
diminish those that exist to the public detriment.
There can be no doubt that the reductions in our diplomatic establish-
ments are very wholesome; and though we should not wish to see our
diplomatic relations reduced to very poor relations, a good deal may yet
be done—or, rather, undone—in this department of our outlay. Our
Ambassador to Paris, Lord Normanby, who likes to do things on a
liberal scale, has undergone a reduction of income which may, as hinted
by Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons, lead to some curtail-
ment of the dinners that a certain class of the English in Paris expect
to be invited to.
We don't see that the dignity of England is enhanced by the in-
dulgence of a few travelling gourmands, and we are glad, therefore,
that the country will be spared the expense, and the Ambassador the
trouble, of entertaining them. We do not, however, wish to see the
Marquis of Normanby, or any other Ambassador, cut down to an
inconveniently low figure, which would prevent him from cutting any
figure at all; and we will take Lord Palmerston's word for it, that
since the Republic has thrown Paris so thoroughly out of luck, thert
has been more luxe than ever. Of course, when in France, the
Ambassador must do as France does, and it must require a large
amount of English gold to keep pace with the French Capital.
Lenten Entertainment at the Mansion House.
Mr. Punch begs to offer his Puseyite friends his condolence on the
circumstance that the Lord Mayor gave, the other day, a grand dinner
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and several other
prelates, helped to eat. Punch would console his genuflective readers
by the suggestion that one of these days we may rejoice in a Tractarian
Lord Mayor—especially should the civic chair be filled by a tallow-
chandler—who, instead of splendid banquets, will give magnificent fasts.