Punch (22.1852)

C^INCE the days of the illustrious Andrew Marvell, Mr. Punch is the first paid M.P.—that is, Member
for Punch—who, being paid, has sedulously given all his heart and all his soul to the interests of his
many thousands of Constituents. To be sure, the salary of Mr. Punch as M.P. is but small—an incon-
siderable threepence per head per week;—but it is the principle enshrined in that unassuming threepence
that makes the wages a glory and an honour. Not the money, but the sentiment of the money; not the
flower, but the odour that is the soul of the flower.

At this time, when some thousand English gentlemen—we will say a thousand—are standing before
their country; indeed, not so much standing as kneeling before it, with their right hands on their waistcoats,
and their left upraised, protesting that they have no such earthly hope as the hope that shall carry them to
the House of Winds, in Westminster; at such a time, with such a rivalry without, Mr. Punch does feel
even more than his usual complacency in his back parlour, knowing that without raising himself the eighth
of an inch from his easy chair, that without even purchasing an inch of ribbon, blue or yellow (the blue
to show his love of Truth, the truth of the Hustings having, time out of mind, been beaten blue; the
yellow, to show his contempt of the gold of the Minister), Mr. Punch will be returned as M.P. for the
whole empire ; elected as the supplementary Six Hundred and Fifty-Ninth Member and Moderator of the
old, acknowledged, constitutional 658. And this, without any effort on his part; with no treating, no music;
with not so much as the froth of one bottle of ginger-beer ; without one note from a hireling trumpet.

Now this was the belief simmering in the heart of Punch : such was the philosophical calmness in
which—as in his easy morning-gown—he was clothed from shoulders to heel, when it was announced to him
by his Boy, who has seen so much of what are called the first people of the day, that from a lively child,
tht ^oor fellow has become absolutely dull—that a Deputation of the Empire was down stairs (at least the
head of the Deputation; for it was long as the Sea-Snake, and with merely its head in No. 85 Fleet