Punch (34.1858)

84 PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [February 27, 1858.

A BRILLIANT SUGGESTION, PRESENTED GRATIS TO THE HORSE GUARDS BY MR. PUNCH.

CORPORATION REFORM.

A Medical Gentleman advertises a book professing to describe a
regimen by which fat people may reduce their bulk; which he calls
the Dietary Self Cure of Corpulency. We have not read this volume,
because we can perfectly well imagine what its contents are, or
at least what they ought to be. A diet consisting of biscuits and
water persevered in for a sufficient length of time, would probably
bring the most excessive of waists within some measure and some com-
ass. If anybody, disgusted with his own obesity,would like to get slim,
e would probably attain his object by living systematically on something
which he particularly hated. It is quite conceivable that a man could
macerate his frame on turtle-soup if he detested turtle; might get
lean upon green fat, if green fat were an abomination to him.

What the illustrious author of Pichwick, and other famous works,
has described as " a light and elegant breakfast off a cigar," is one
sort of meal which, habitually taken instead of any other, and apart
from brandy and-water or malt liquor, would preserve, or restore, the
graceful outline of the figure. These remarks may be concluded by
the suggestion of a means of prolonging the elegant gracility of youth
which may be worth the attention of the young swell who is anxious
lest he should become swollen. Let him procure a leather strap;
buckle it round his waist regularly every morning, and, as soon as it
begins to feel rather tight, eat and drink a little less. How many
who are now waddling about with cumbrous paunches, by allusions to
which they are insulted wherever they go, might, by the observance of
the foregoing easy rule, have preserved those figures which they can
now only hope to regain by the sudden practice of an abstinence from
eating and drinking by far more intolerable than any amount of
ridicule.

Important Ladies and Gentlemen.

If the Proprietors of East India Stock are to continue to elect the
Eoard of Directors, why suouid not the holders of the Three per
Cents have a similar share in the constitution of the Government of
the United Kingdom.

'A New "Idee Napoleonienne."—jlopls Napoleon, Emperor of
Erance, and the Dictator of England!

THE IMPROVED PASSPORT.

The Erench Government is not half strict enough in its regulations
respecting passports. It does not take anything like the care which it
might take to prevent conspirators and assassins from passing them-
selves off for peaceable and honest travellers. Why do not the advisers
of Napoleon the Third avail themselves of a security which modern
science offers them for that purpose ? Why do they not insist that every
visitor to their hospitable shores shall come provided with a form of
passport which shall include a photograph portrait of the holder, duly
attested by an official signature ? How much more trustworthy this
would be than the clumsy description of the individual's personal
appearance which is now all that there is to assure the Erench authori-
ties that the document which he exhibits is not forged, or has not been
obtained by fraud ! The requisition of a photograph-passport would
only add to the expense incurred by the party obliged to procure it,
and as regards Erench interests it would create no greater inconveni-
ence than that of the exclusion of a few more of the already vast
numbers of Englishmen whom the trouble and cost of getting passports,
deter, as it is, from visiting Erance. What signifies putting a stop to
the influx of English people, with more money than sense, into Paris,
to anybody on earth besides themselves, except to the Parisian shop-
keepers with whom they have heretofore been accustomed to spend so
much of the cash which burns in their pockets ?

The Maxims of Rochefoucauld.—So called, because to every
Maxim of Satire there is scarcely a Minim of Truth.

The Value oe Early Rising in Parliament.—It is your early
M.P. that catches the Speaker's eye.

TF RICHARD COBDEN will return to his disconsolate friends at
Manchester, all past errors will be forgiven, and no questions asked. More than
this, in handsome commemoration of the happy reconciliation, the electors, to the
number of some 8,000, pledge themselves to secure his return at the forthcoming
election free of expense. This will be cheerfully accomplished under the strong
conviction that Mr. Cobden, as Member for Manchester (the scene of his former
triumphs), will be in every sense, The Right Man in the Right Place. a Free
Trade Parliament, without the Great Champion of Free Trade, is a vulgar unconsti-
tutional anomaly.—N.B. No time should be lost, as the Tories are already in a state
of the most blundering despair at the prospect of R. C.'s return.