Punch (35.1858)

i02

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[September 4. 1858.

JOHN COMPANY BAHADOOR.
an ffilegg.

1st September, 1858,

Each year September's earliest day

Wakes Eley's patent Cartridge,
And sturdy M.P s trudge to slay

The loud wing-whirring partridge.
This year a nobler spoil shall grace

The Parliamentary larder,
To-day'mid dead-stock takes a place,

John Company Baiadoor.

'Tis long since first on Indian soil

He gained p. trader's footing,
Empires since then have been his spoil,

And thrones have felt his " looting, '
In vain have Kings and Potentates

Essayed with martial ardour,
To keep outside their Palace-gates

John Company Bahadoor.

But time arrests with ruthless hands

Each worn out fancy's hobby,
The Jew no longer seatless stands

Within St. Stephen's lobby ;
With special pleas, and Richard Roe,

And many an old retarder
Of progress, lies in limbo low,

John Company Bahadoor.

John ! Tit for tat! As you have shorn

The Hindoostanee nation,
The lion and the unicorn

Now teach you—annexation!
Of lands o'er which you long have reigned,

John Bull henceforth mounts guarder,
And we'll take care of what you gained,

John Company Bahadoor!

Distressing Position of Charles, who does not feel Well, and who is
keenly alive to the fact that amy is looking at him tbb0tjgb her

Opera Glass.

Answer to Conundrum, Page 101,
Soled again.

I Does our author mean to say that the British public will welcome
SOME FRENCH FUN. 'Louis Napoleon as a deliverer from Queen Victoria, and that,

when he dies, his remains will be deposited at the Receiving House
of the'Humane Society, or the Office of the Society for the Preven-
tion of Cruelty to Animals ?

That Louis Napoleon will, according to the pamphleteer's
expectation, be welcomed by the British public, seems plain enough
from the passage following :—

To whom does Ihe author of " Aurons-nous la Guerre avec V Angle-
terre ? " allude in the following apostrophe to his Emperor ?—

"Sire, the people of England are not against you, you have only against you
those Bardaxapalijses of the Thames, who, drinking from golden eups the sweat of
a hundred millions of Helots, set themselves up as the pastors of civilization."

Who are the Sardanapaluses of the Thames ? The Aldermen are
the only persons whom it is easy to conceive intended. In being
perhaps rather luxurious, they may bear a remote resemblance to
Sardanapalus ; but in other respects they are very dissimilar to that
monarch. Sardanapalus was refined in his pleasures, which more-
over were not limited to the table ; and there is every reason to believe
that he was a man possessed of smell as well as of taste, and would
never have endured such a perfume as that of the Thames. Then the
worshipful Aldermen are accustomed to drink out of glasses, not golden
cups, and to imbibe wine and punch, and not the fluid which the
French pamphleteer mentions. If he alludes to the loving cup, and
intends to express its contents by a metaphor, what idea must he
entertain of the size of a goblet sufficiently large to hold a quantity of
negus equivalent to the laborious exudations of a hundred millions of
Htdots? What a Rabelaisian estimate he must have formed of the
Aldermanic paunch, and general proportions! His notion of an
Aiderman would appear to be Goft indefinitely magnified. But whence
could he have derived the fancy that the Aldermen of London pretend
to be the pastors of civilization ? Possibly he confounds Alderman
wit h Archbishop. Both Lambeth and Fulham Palaces lie on the
R;ver. Perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury is a Sardana-
palus of the Thames, and the Bishop of London is another. Thev

" When the privileged classes of England declaim against France, let them reflect
on the amount of support they would obtain from the English people on the day
when a French General should present himselt with universal suffrage in one hand
and the Code Napotton in thr> other."

Universal Suffrage in one hand and Universal Slavery in the ot her—
which is what the English people would see there instead of the Code
Napoleon—would probably induce them rather to bear those pri-
vileged classes which they have, than to fly to that despotism which
they know not of; and indeed it is more than likely that they would
support their privileged classes against the French General to the
extent of repelling his kind advances with some violence, and requiting
them with very ill-treatment. Notwithstanding the peculiar beverage
in which the Sardanapaluses of the Thames indulge at the expense
of their numerous Helots, the latter do not exactly cherish the
aspirations thus represented :—

" From the present moment it is not only to Heaven that the Britisb workman
will appeal in his misery, he will also keep hia eyes fixed in the direction of Cher-
bourg, and seek to discover amid the mists of the horizon the approach Of the fleet
of deliverance."

If the British workman had any idea that a fleet was a; To-iching
from Cherbourg for the purpose of delivering him from even his
greatest grievances, the ungrateful British workman would k ; mediately

exercise the pastoral office', and may consider that they contribute emol hims,el,f.in a c°rPs of volunteers for the purpose of preventing his

somewhat to promote civilization by the encouragement of foreign
missions

The next sentence is another eni<

ma

would-be deliverers from effecting their kind intentions ou i;-s behalf,
in spite of all the depletion to which his system is subject'd by the
bloated Sardanapaluses of rhe Thames.

'' Sire, your glory will not be that of a conqueror, but your ashes will be deposited
in the temple of humanity." j ftow T0 Learn all yotjr Defects.—Quarrel with your best friend.