DOI issue:
December 19, 1857
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16620#0258
248 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. jDecember 19, 1857
or he would not have come out of his hole. A British officer's word
must, he respected. Imprisonment in an iron cage for the rest of the
miscreant's life, as a spectacle and warning to his ex-subjects, might
perhaps be as beneficial as the gibbet to which a wretch who ordered
the slaughter of Englishwomen and their children, ought to have been
consigned.
The Chancellor, of the Exchequer's motion for referring the
Bank Act, and the causes of the recent crisis, to a committee, was
resisted by Mb. Disraeli, who thought he knew everything connected
with the s'ubject, but the House resolved by 295 to 117 that they would
nave another Blue Book.
Saturday. An inquiry was arranged in which the nation will take
much more interest; namely, whether the Government did not send the
soldiers to India by the worst road instead of the best. Many might
have been sent across Egypt, and the Cockney horror of Vernon
Smyjthe at the idea of " plunging men into Egypt to be demoralized,"
was perfectly ludicrous. He seemed utterly unaware that there is a
railway from the Sea to Cairo, and that the East India cadets do the
rest of the journey to Suez, (a pleasant ride, with lots of refreshment
places) in omnibuses as good as those of the General Omnibus
Company, and a great deal faster. In such an atmosphere as this day's,
Mr. Punch sighs for the pure skies of Cairo, and his own cloud in the
narghile. Vernon Smyjthe's face is blackened before him for talking
such ineffable bosh. Ho ! there, the shoes of glory for his absurd feet.
Give him two dozen, and may it do him good.—Backalloom.
OUR CITY ARTICLE.
material, or plus immaterial, which comes to the same thing, and is to
be balanced against bad half-crowns and counterfeit coin generally.
A five-pound note is five moral sovereigns. A counterfeit five-pound
note is five immoral sovereigns—scientifically speaking, and taking
into consideration the judex ad quern and the compound interest which
they bear in the Mil bank Penitentiary, the Hulks, and the Penal
Colonies, which merely form the coupons paid by the nation on the
more unequivocal investments of rascaldom traced back to the purchase
power which originally created them. The operations of the counterfeit
branch of this power are somewhat exceptional; and although they
create and uphold purchase powers of another stamp, namely, Judges'
wigs and Barristers' gowns, all the sharp practice of attorneyism, and the
whole arms, legs, and instruments of the law, from the Lord Chief
Justice's ermine to the hangman's rope ; their effect is, upon the whole,
the same contraction of the moral purchase money of the country, as the
restrictive action of the Bank Charter Act of 1844 exercises on the
Bank-note circulation when the gold gets low.
But what are all the Bank-notes in the world against the solemn
faces, fine dresses, and addresses, regular church-goings, with crimson-
lined pews, handsome equipages, fine houses, name-handles, benevolent
subscriptions, soft voices, grey whiskers, portly presences, port-wine
noses, business energies, and all the purchase power of the man sterling,
plus the means sterling: the moral money plus the material money,
which is one vast " promise to pay " stamped on the face of the whole
body social ? So to speak syllogistically, if money be money, and
purchase power be money, and everything that conduces to credit, or
assists rascality, be purchase power ; then everything is money—good,
bad, or indifferent—all the constituent small change of the man sterling,
plug the £ s. d. sterling, with their respective counterfeits. •
Even let a man's property be entirely personal, that is to say, let his
only hereditary estate be " that estate of sin and misery " on which,
as we are all heirs to it in common, no one can be expected to advance
money : and his personal property, that only real property in the world,
—namely, what his hat covers—he has a purchase power proportionate
to face, figure and address in the domain of moneyed spinsters and
jointured widows so long as he is personally marketable. When sold—
that is, when he becomes the property of a wife—he has simply invested
his personal capital in the estate of matrimony, with its contingents.
He has realised, as we say on 'Change,—no doubt on a due estimate of
the capitalisation of dinner-parlies, pleasant trips to Richmond, white-
bait at Greenwich, petit-soupers, balls, and other things of the kind, to
which he has been accustomed in his marketable epoch; and draws, if
need be, on the credit of the honourable estate and the moral value of
the pledges which are its natural produce.
Money, money, money, everything is money. And if everything
be money, good money, bad money, or indifferent money, real coin,
sweated coin, clipped coin, or counterfeit coin, even down to crapulous
head-aches on which the wine merchant, the physician, the apothecary,
and the drysalter all draw their respective percentages of profit: why
all this patching at our monetary system ? If the only question be the
convertibility, namely, the moral plus the material—why such a legisla-
tive fuss about that fragment of the great universal promise to pay—
the Bank-note ? Why make it dance and beck and bow and come and go
and rise and fall as the mere shadow of its golden constituent ? Why
make a mere monetary coquette of it—■
" Nolit ubi veils, ert /.oils capiat ultro—"
(aJas, how painfully applicable and inapplicable the two clauses) till it
cause its most ardent woers, alike the honest and dishonest, to die
oney is money—the first pro-
position to be established, to
an intelligent comprehension
of the present monetary crisis.
This proposition we shall
prove, as is often done in
equally momentous instances,
by taking it for granted, or by
asserting it, which comes to
the same thing.
Well, it being demonstrated
that money is money, we come
to the second proposition,
which involves an analytical
disintegration of the forego-
ing; and accordingly we re-
solve it from our immemorial
experiences into the instru-
ment of purchase in whatever
shape, sign, or substance we
may possess it for the time
being. This power is of two
kinds, namely, material and
moral, or as the latter might be
expressed, moral plus material.
With the material we have
nothing to do at present, so
handing it over to the bullionists, as a settled question, we shall
treat entirely of the moral, wtiich is so exceedingly unsettled. A
Bank-note is moral money : namely, the promise to pay plus the means
of paying—moral money of a definite value. A regular attendance j off in pecuniary phthisis, monetary consumption, and all kinds of
at church in a prominent seat with crimson linings, and a large I disorders of the chest. As well pass a law regulating coats, hats,
gilt bible and prayer-book, is moral money of indefinite value. A1 carriages, horses, houses, name-handles, benevolent subscriptions,
good stock of assurance, or—as it is philosophically expressed—
brass, is capital enough to begin the world with, and is one of the
nost ordinary metallic bases on which men commence the superstructure
of the credit system. A superfine coat with a general neatness of attire,
is a subsidiary power of purchase ; namely, part and parcel of the small
change of that golden integer, the man sterling. A respectable frequency
in subscription lists for benevolent institutions, will stand good for a
year's dealings with butchers, bakers, grocers, tailors, haberdashers,
shoe-makers, blacksmiths, and the whole circle of local industry. A
handle to one's name, a fine house, a handsome equipage, are all
so many powers of purchase. A solemn look will always find an old
lady to endorse it. A portly figure, grey whiskers, and a port-wine
nose, with a slight dash of Burgundy on the cheek, command universal
credit. A smooth tongue a taste for prayer-meetings, the first gloss
f a white neckcloth —only the first, the first speck is bankruptcy—
ommercial enterprise, a character for success, a smooth tongue, worth
nd counterfeit-worth, are all so many purchase-powers, so much
moral money plus material - so many constituent parts, so much small
change of that golden integer—the man sterling plus the £ s. d.
,-terling for which he promises to stand good. Of course this is all so
loag as the convertibility of the promise to pay is not called in ques-
Uon ; with the stoppage of payments the whole becomes moral minus
o
solemn faces, port wine noses, Burgundy cheeks, and all the resources
of credit or of rascality, and all forms of the moral money, plus or minus
the material as the case may be. Prohibit people from going to church
if their bankers' balances do not justify so respectable a line of conduct;
ordain that solemn faces shall become miserable faces the moment the
golden reserve shows a tendency to exhaustion ; that fat comfortable
men shall fast and get low in the flesh when their metallic basis does
not justify a creditable display of adipose tissue; that portly presences
shall deport themselves no longer uprightly when the golden stay is
withdrawn; that port wine noses shall bleach themselves blue with
tears ; and benevolent men contract their benevolent subscriptions to
a certain statutory limit, and walk about with their pockets sewed up,
to show that they have no more use for them. All these purchasing
powers are so much money, so many promises to pay, so maoy notes
on the great Credit Mobilier of public honesty ; and all the thirty-eight
millions of bank-paper in the three kingdoms are but a fragment in
comparison. The great question, therefore, is less the convertibility of
the paper money than the convertibility of the paper men • to distin-
guish the real from the counterfeit, the honest from the dishonest, the
enterprising man from the gambler; to find a better standard than
gold for moral money, and a better basis than gold for the convertibility
of the man sterling.
i
or he would not have come out of his hole. A British officer's word
must, he respected. Imprisonment in an iron cage for the rest of the
miscreant's life, as a spectacle and warning to his ex-subjects, might
perhaps be as beneficial as the gibbet to which a wretch who ordered
the slaughter of Englishwomen and their children, ought to have been
consigned.
The Chancellor, of the Exchequer's motion for referring the
Bank Act, and the causes of the recent crisis, to a committee, was
resisted by Mb. Disraeli, who thought he knew everything connected
with the s'ubject, but the House resolved by 295 to 117 that they would
nave another Blue Book.
Saturday. An inquiry was arranged in which the nation will take
much more interest; namely, whether the Government did not send the
soldiers to India by the worst road instead of the best. Many might
have been sent across Egypt, and the Cockney horror of Vernon
Smyjthe at the idea of " plunging men into Egypt to be demoralized,"
was perfectly ludicrous. He seemed utterly unaware that there is a
railway from the Sea to Cairo, and that the East India cadets do the
rest of the journey to Suez, (a pleasant ride, with lots of refreshment
places) in omnibuses as good as those of the General Omnibus
Company, and a great deal faster. In such an atmosphere as this day's,
Mr. Punch sighs for the pure skies of Cairo, and his own cloud in the
narghile. Vernon Smyjthe's face is blackened before him for talking
such ineffable bosh. Ho ! there, the shoes of glory for his absurd feet.
Give him two dozen, and may it do him good.—Backalloom.
OUR CITY ARTICLE.
material, or plus immaterial, which comes to the same thing, and is to
be balanced against bad half-crowns and counterfeit coin generally.
A five-pound note is five moral sovereigns. A counterfeit five-pound
note is five immoral sovereigns—scientifically speaking, and taking
into consideration the judex ad quern and the compound interest which
they bear in the Mil bank Penitentiary, the Hulks, and the Penal
Colonies, which merely form the coupons paid by the nation on the
more unequivocal investments of rascaldom traced back to the purchase
power which originally created them. The operations of the counterfeit
branch of this power are somewhat exceptional; and although they
create and uphold purchase powers of another stamp, namely, Judges'
wigs and Barristers' gowns, all the sharp practice of attorneyism, and the
whole arms, legs, and instruments of the law, from the Lord Chief
Justice's ermine to the hangman's rope ; their effect is, upon the whole,
the same contraction of the moral purchase money of the country, as the
restrictive action of the Bank Charter Act of 1844 exercises on the
Bank-note circulation when the gold gets low.
But what are all the Bank-notes in the world against the solemn
faces, fine dresses, and addresses, regular church-goings, with crimson-
lined pews, handsome equipages, fine houses, name-handles, benevolent
subscriptions, soft voices, grey whiskers, portly presences, port-wine
noses, business energies, and all the purchase power of the man sterling,
plus the means sterling: the moral money plus the material money,
which is one vast " promise to pay " stamped on the face of the whole
body social ? So to speak syllogistically, if money be money, and
purchase power be money, and everything that conduces to credit, or
assists rascality, be purchase power ; then everything is money—good,
bad, or indifferent—all the constituent small change of the man sterling,
plug the £ s. d. sterling, with their respective counterfeits. •
Even let a man's property be entirely personal, that is to say, let his
only hereditary estate be " that estate of sin and misery " on which,
as we are all heirs to it in common, no one can be expected to advance
money : and his personal property, that only real property in the world,
—namely, what his hat covers—he has a purchase power proportionate
to face, figure and address in the domain of moneyed spinsters and
jointured widows so long as he is personally marketable. When sold—
that is, when he becomes the property of a wife—he has simply invested
his personal capital in the estate of matrimony, with its contingents.
He has realised, as we say on 'Change,—no doubt on a due estimate of
the capitalisation of dinner-parlies, pleasant trips to Richmond, white-
bait at Greenwich, petit-soupers, balls, and other things of the kind, to
which he has been accustomed in his marketable epoch; and draws, if
need be, on the credit of the honourable estate and the moral value of
the pledges which are its natural produce.
Money, money, money, everything is money. And if everything
be money, good money, bad money, or indifferent money, real coin,
sweated coin, clipped coin, or counterfeit coin, even down to crapulous
head-aches on which the wine merchant, the physician, the apothecary,
and the drysalter all draw their respective percentages of profit: why
all this patching at our monetary system ? If the only question be the
convertibility, namely, the moral plus the material—why such a legisla-
tive fuss about that fragment of the great universal promise to pay—
the Bank-note ? Why make it dance and beck and bow and come and go
and rise and fall as the mere shadow of its golden constituent ? Why
make a mere monetary coquette of it—■
" Nolit ubi veils, ert /.oils capiat ultro—"
(aJas, how painfully applicable and inapplicable the two clauses) till it
cause its most ardent woers, alike the honest and dishonest, to die
oney is money—the first pro-
position to be established, to
an intelligent comprehension
of the present monetary crisis.
This proposition we shall
prove, as is often done in
equally momentous instances,
by taking it for granted, or by
asserting it, which comes to
the same thing.
Well, it being demonstrated
that money is money, we come
to the second proposition,
which involves an analytical
disintegration of the forego-
ing; and accordingly we re-
solve it from our immemorial
experiences into the instru-
ment of purchase in whatever
shape, sign, or substance we
may possess it for the time
being. This power is of two
kinds, namely, material and
moral, or as the latter might be
expressed, moral plus material.
With the material we have
nothing to do at present, so
handing it over to the bullionists, as a settled question, we shall
treat entirely of the moral, wtiich is so exceedingly unsettled. A
Bank-note is moral money : namely, the promise to pay plus the means
of paying—moral money of a definite value. A regular attendance j off in pecuniary phthisis, monetary consumption, and all kinds of
at church in a prominent seat with crimson linings, and a large I disorders of the chest. As well pass a law regulating coats, hats,
gilt bible and prayer-book, is moral money of indefinite value. A1 carriages, horses, houses, name-handles, benevolent subscriptions,
good stock of assurance, or—as it is philosophically expressed—
brass, is capital enough to begin the world with, and is one of the
nost ordinary metallic bases on which men commence the superstructure
of the credit system. A superfine coat with a general neatness of attire,
is a subsidiary power of purchase ; namely, part and parcel of the small
change of that golden integer, the man sterling. A respectable frequency
in subscription lists for benevolent institutions, will stand good for a
year's dealings with butchers, bakers, grocers, tailors, haberdashers,
shoe-makers, blacksmiths, and the whole circle of local industry. A
handle to one's name, a fine house, a handsome equipage, are all
so many powers of purchase. A solemn look will always find an old
lady to endorse it. A portly figure, grey whiskers, and a port-wine
nose, with a slight dash of Burgundy on the cheek, command universal
credit. A smooth tongue a taste for prayer-meetings, the first gloss
f a white neckcloth —only the first, the first speck is bankruptcy—
ommercial enterprise, a character for success, a smooth tongue, worth
nd counterfeit-worth, are all so many purchase-powers, so much
moral money plus material - so many constituent parts, so much small
change of that golden integer—the man sterling plus the £ s. d.
,-terling for which he promises to stand good. Of course this is all so
loag as the convertibility of the promise to pay is not called in ques-
Uon ; with the stoppage of payments the whole becomes moral minus
o
solemn faces, port wine noses, Burgundy cheeks, and all the resources
of credit or of rascality, and all forms of the moral money, plus or minus
the material as the case may be. Prohibit people from going to church
if their bankers' balances do not justify so respectable a line of conduct;
ordain that solemn faces shall become miserable faces the moment the
golden reserve shows a tendency to exhaustion ; that fat comfortable
men shall fast and get low in the flesh when their metallic basis does
not justify a creditable display of adipose tissue; that portly presences
shall deport themselves no longer uprightly when the golden stay is
withdrawn; that port wine noses shall bleach themselves blue with
tears ; and benevolent men contract their benevolent subscriptions to
a certain statutory limit, and walk about with their pockets sewed up,
to show that they have no more use for them. All these purchasing
powers are so much money, so many promises to pay, so maoy notes
on the great Credit Mobilier of public honesty ; and all the thirty-eight
millions of bank-paper in the three kingdoms are but a fragment in
comparison. The great question, therefore, is less the convertibility of
the paper money than the convertibility of the paper men • to distin-
guish the real from the counterfeit, the honest from the dishonest, the
enterprising man from the gambler; to find a better standard than
gold for moral money, and a better basis than gold for the convertibility
of the man sterling.
i