DOI Heft:
January 26, 1856
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16617#0048
40
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[January 2Q, 1856.
THE CENTRAL BOARD IN DANGER.
The Central Board of Metropolitan Works has been in
imminent danger of self-destruction ; for it has shown a
tendency to commit a sort of official suicide, by making' all
its Members vacate their seats on their self-election to all
the salaried offices. The business of the Board opened with
the absorption of Me. Thwaites in the paid chairman-
ship ; and this was followed up by the threatened swampirjg
of Mr. Wilkinson in the Chief Clerkship. If a check
had not been put to the mania which seemed to have sprang
up among the Board of electing itself to all paid offices
! ia its own gift, the probability is, that there would not have
been a Member of the original body left; but that the
whole of those who had been elected to govern the
Metropolis would have been found serving it at somewhat
extravagant salaries. It has been said, with much truth,
than the representative system is now put upon its trial;
and we should very much lament to find that the representa-
tive system had been exemplified by every one repre-
senting his own interest and a general division of all
the paid offices among those who are entrusted with the
responsibility of finding proper persons to fill them. Allow-
ing that when the Board looked round for a chairman at
£1,500 a-year, it was impossible to find so fit a man for the
■ post and the pay as Mr. Thwaites, it is not very likely
i hat the best clerks, architects, surveyors, and all the other
recipients of the money at the disposal of the Board, would
be found within the same narrow circle. The notice that
has been taken of (his disposition to appropriate to itself
all the lucrative places in its own gift, will probably have
the effect of checking the Board in its career of self-destruc-
tion; but, if it i-hould be persevered in, we would propose
as a design for a seal, the very appropriate subject of Saturn
devouring his own children.
The Man of a Select Pew.
Ma. Cobden's pamphlet, What Next ? and Next? will
certainly not procure him the suffrages of the million.
* n-dt-ivnr atct nuTTTtr jwnu Under these circumstances, perhaps, the honourable gentle-
U±tlJliVAJ>ibJl<. man would be content wit li having recommended himself
I tell ter what. Bill 1 I don't half like these here Mocstarchers. to a smaller number. May we suggest the Chiltern
They do mop dp such a Lot of Grog !" Hundreds P
LODGING FOR LITERARY TRAVELLERS.
One of our weeklvcontemporaries has taken to showing its impartiality
in a very remarkable manner, by opening its columns to everybody—
who will pay for them. Whenever a cause is not quite strong enough
to support a journal of its own, the paper alluded to will allow itself to
be converted into " an organ " at so much per week, according to the
quantity of space that may be agreed upon.
The journal in question may be regarded as a sort of ready-furnished
lodgings of the press, where every small party whose members have no
place of toeir own in which they can lay their heads together, may find
respectable accommodation without the expense and the risk of a
separate (newspaper) establishment. All the little incipient movements
that have neither house nor home, and would be driven ignominiously
from the doors of every journal in London but, the one to which we |
have referred, have been supplied with a local habitation and a name,
at so much per week, in the hospitable columns of the paper, which
rejoices in the name of a certain well-known line of omnibuses. Some-
times it is the Temperance movement which puts up, for a few months,
in the ready-furnished columns of our respectable friend; sometimes it
is Kossuth who takes a suite of apartments at this literary lodging-
house ; and, occasionally, the whole premises are to let—a fact we
observe from their very vacant aspect. We presume the speculation
succeeds, and we must confess we think the idea a very ingenious one ;
for it not only comprises the plan of getting a paper filled without the
cost of editing, but it provides a source of income, by letting out to
literary tenants the very space which, in ordinary cases, none but those
who are well paid will occupy.
A Model Medal.
As the Duke of Cambridge has distributed the English medal to
the French troops who side by side fought with our brave fellows in
the Crimea, of course, in due season, English soldiers will, in corre-
sponding manner, be decorated by France. Let us hope that the
medal—above all others—carried by both nations, will for ever remain
the medal without a reverse !
AN EMPEROR'S RIGHT HAND.
Oaths are edged tools, apt to cut those very badly who rashly handle
them. Do we not remember that, even ere Nicholas was consigned
to the cathedral of Peter-and-Paul, his son, the Emperor Alexander,
in solemn council with his Russian statesmen and nobles, declared it
1o be his unalterable purpose to follow unshrinkingly the policy of
Catherine and his father; and further, did he not "wish that his
right hand might be withered, if that hand should ever sign any treaty
of peace by which any portion of holy Russia should be ceded to an
enemy ? " Very certain we are, there is no gainsaying this. And now
is Alexander to sign this fatal piece of parchment. Let us, then, in
his affliction,—with so terrible a calamity impending over him, pro-
voked by his own rashness; let us then, as forgiving Christians, pray
that the right hand of Alexander may not be stricken ; but, spared in
its strength, may for all future lime keep itself pure and sweet from
blood.
HAYDN'S " REQUIEM."
Joseph Haydn is dead; and the Government, writes a friend of the
deceased, "will save the pension of the Is. Hd.per diem which they had
just granted him." Of course, the catastrophe is purely accidental;
otherwise it would seem that an enlightened Government, in its patron-
age of art and letters, possessed in an extraordinary degree the faculty
of exalting, estimating, and timing the sufferings of genius and learning,
in order to come in just at the death. Haydn's tomb-stone (he died
on the 17th inst.) ought to bear the Bate of the Government grant and
the amount. These would comprise a very touching epitaph. Learning
asks for bread, and death in its benevolence awards a tomb-stone.
The Evil that Men Do Lives after Them.
Complaints have been made against certain Railway Companies
that their permanent way is not likely to last, but we are sorry to find
on inquiry, that many of them are going on in the old way, which is a
very bad way, and is likely to be only too permanent.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[January 2Q, 1856.
THE CENTRAL BOARD IN DANGER.
The Central Board of Metropolitan Works has been in
imminent danger of self-destruction ; for it has shown a
tendency to commit a sort of official suicide, by making' all
its Members vacate their seats on their self-election to all
the salaried offices. The business of the Board opened with
the absorption of Me. Thwaites in the paid chairman-
ship ; and this was followed up by the threatened swampirjg
of Mr. Wilkinson in the Chief Clerkship. If a check
had not been put to the mania which seemed to have sprang
up among the Board of electing itself to all paid offices
! ia its own gift, the probability is, that there would not have
been a Member of the original body left; but that the
whole of those who had been elected to govern the
Metropolis would have been found serving it at somewhat
extravagant salaries. It has been said, with much truth,
than the representative system is now put upon its trial;
and we should very much lament to find that the representa-
tive system had been exemplified by every one repre-
senting his own interest and a general division of all
the paid offices among those who are entrusted with the
responsibility of finding proper persons to fill them. Allow-
ing that when the Board looked round for a chairman at
£1,500 a-year, it was impossible to find so fit a man for the
■ post and the pay as Mr. Thwaites, it is not very likely
i hat the best clerks, architects, surveyors, and all the other
recipients of the money at the disposal of the Board, would
be found within the same narrow circle. The notice that
has been taken of (his disposition to appropriate to itself
all the lucrative places in its own gift, will probably have
the effect of checking the Board in its career of self-destruc-
tion; but, if it i-hould be persevered in, we would propose
as a design for a seal, the very appropriate subject of Saturn
devouring his own children.
The Man of a Select Pew.
Ma. Cobden's pamphlet, What Next ? and Next? will
certainly not procure him the suffrages of the million.
* n-dt-ivnr atct nuTTTtr jwnu Under these circumstances, perhaps, the honourable gentle-
U±tlJliVAJ>ibJl<. man would be content wit li having recommended himself
I tell ter what. Bill 1 I don't half like these here Mocstarchers. to a smaller number. May we suggest the Chiltern
They do mop dp such a Lot of Grog !" Hundreds P
LODGING FOR LITERARY TRAVELLERS.
One of our weeklvcontemporaries has taken to showing its impartiality
in a very remarkable manner, by opening its columns to everybody—
who will pay for them. Whenever a cause is not quite strong enough
to support a journal of its own, the paper alluded to will allow itself to
be converted into " an organ " at so much per week, according to the
quantity of space that may be agreed upon.
The journal in question may be regarded as a sort of ready-furnished
lodgings of the press, where every small party whose members have no
place of toeir own in which they can lay their heads together, may find
respectable accommodation without the expense and the risk of a
separate (newspaper) establishment. All the little incipient movements
that have neither house nor home, and would be driven ignominiously
from the doors of every journal in London but, the one to which we |
have referred, have been supplied with a local habitation and a name,
at so much per week, in the hospitable columns of the paper, which
rejoices in the name of a certain well-known line of omnibuses. Some-
times it is the Temperance movement which puts up, for a few months,
in the ready-furnished columns of our respectable friend; sometimes it
is Kossuth who takes a suite of apartments at this literary lodging-
house ; and, occasionally, the whole premises are to let—a fact we
observe from their very vacant aspect. We presume the speculation
succeeds, and we must confess we think the idea a very ingenious one ;
for it not only comprises the plan of getting a paper filled without the
cost of editing, but it provides a source of income, by letting out to
literary tenants the very space which, in ordinary cases, none but those
who are well paid will occupy.
A Model Medal.
As the Duke of Cambridge has distributed the English medal to
the French troops who side by side fought with our brave fellows in
the Crimea, of course, in due season, English soldiers will, in corre-
sponding manner, be decorated by France. Let us hope that the
medal—above all others—carried by both nations, will for ever remain
the medal without a reverse !
AN EMPEROR'S RIGHT HAND.
Oaths are edged tools, apt to cut those very badly who rashly handle
them. Do we not remember that, even ere Nicholas was consigned
to the cathedral of Peter-and-Paul, his son, the Emperor Alexander,
in solemn council with his Russian statesmen and nobles, declared it
1o be his unalterable purpose to follow unshrinkingly the policy of
Catherine and his father; and further, did he not "wish that his
right hand might be withered, if that hand should ever sign any treaty
of peace by which any portion of holy Russia should be ceded to an
enemy ? " Very certain we are, there is no gainsaying this. And now
is Alexander to sign this fatal piece of parchment. Let us, then, in
his affliction,—with so terrible a calamity impending over him, pro-
voked by his own rashness; let us then, as forgiving Christians, pray
that the right hand of Alexander may not be stricken ; but, spared in
its strength, may for all future lime keep itself pure and sweet from
blood.
HAYDN'S " REQUIEM."
Joseph Haydn is dead; and the Government, writes a friend of the
deceased, "will save the pension of the Is. Hd.per diem which they had
just granted him." Of course, the catastrophe is purely accidental;
otherwise it would seem that an enlightened Government, in its patron-
age of art and letters, possessed in an extraordinary degree the faculty
of exalting, estimating, and timing the sufferings of genius and learning,
in order to come in just at the death. Haydn's tomb-stone (he died
on the 17th inst.) ought to bear the Bate of the Government grant and
the amount. These would comprise a very touching epitaph. Learning
asks for bread, and death in its benevolence awards a tomb-stone.
The Evil that Men Do Lives after Them.
Complaints have been made against certain Railway Companies
that their permanent way is not likely to last, but we are sorry to find
on inquiry, that many of them are going on in the old way, which is a
very bad way, and is likely to be only too permanent.