Punch: Punch (38.1860)

March io, i860.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. 95

RUINED ENGLAND!

{An Article intended for the “ Morning ’Tizer.”)

las ! Our worst fears have
been realised. Her enemies
have triumphed, and England,
erstwhile “merry,” sitteth
groaning in despair. Aris-
tocratic Nonchalance, in
league with classic Imbecility
hath, as we predicted, turned
traitor in the camp, and
thrown open the gates to let
in the invader. The dotard
Palmerston, in concert with
the dull and drivelling Glad-
stone, hath done the dastard’s
deed for which Posterity will
damn him, and e’en Antiquity
would, if it had but known it,
joined the curse!

Alas! Yes, it is too true.
Government have carried
their reduction of the wine duties, and the trade in British beer and British
brandy therefore dies. While we write, the French invasion of cheap
wines has begun. Their light clarets are trooping to supplant our “ heavy
wet.” Thin Bordeaux is coming to knock down our.bottled stout, and
rot-gut Roussillon will wave the spigot over prostrate Bass. Allsopp’s
ale will fall ne’er more to rise again (in price). Reid will soon be
shaken by the ill wind of adversity. Whitbread & Co.’s Entire will
be entirely swept away, and not a drop remain unspilt of Truman’s
half and half. Barclay will take refuge in the Courts of Basinghall
Street, and over head and ears in trouble will be Charrington and
Head. Meux’s double X will be X-tinguished by Medoc, while the
frenzied friends of Free Trade will in bad French cry, “tant Meux! ”
And is this—let us gravely ask our readers—is this nothing ? _ Do
you call it nothing to destroy the British nation ?—by depriving it of
health and wealth, nay, everything but name ? For that the budget
will be nationally the death of us, who doubts ? Rob a Briton of his
beer, and you rob him of his life. You take away his stamina, if you
take away his stout. To substitute sour claret for sweet wholesome
malt and hops, would be, at a blow, to break his staff of life, and sap
the very bulwarks of the British constitution!

Yet this is what the enemies of England have been doing; and fools,
to quote the poet—

“ Have werry much applauded them,

For what they’ve been and done.”

Little think they of the consequences of this rash, this awful act!
Little think they that they’ve mined the deep foundations of the
State, and dealt Britannia a home-thrust which she for ages hence
must stagger under. Little reck they that our soldiers will lose their
pith and pluck, and our sailors get as watery and wrnak as their French
drinks; that our navies will ere long become as nerveless as our
navvies, and our armies be deprived of e’en the strength to use their
legs. Thinned by thin sour wine, our forces soon will be our weak-
nesses. True Britons, it is well known, subsist mainly upon beer; and
if they cannot keep their pecker up, goodbye to their pluck.

As we are addressing a moneyed class of men, we consider less their
pleasures than we do their pockets. Else might we dilate on the de-
liciousness of Beer, and the delights which it bestows upon the minds
which truly relish it. Dulce est desippere. Sweet it is to sip, and yet
more delectable is it to drink deeply of. Nor is its nutrition of less
note than its niceness. As Plato well remarks in the second of his
Georgies, “ Sine)/ Bacco friget Venus, which, we need not tell our
readers, means that malt and hops invigorate the body, Baccus being,
as all know, the classic synonym for Beer.

And alas! this mind-improving, muscle-fortifying beverage are we
going to exchange for some few hogsheads of vile hog-swill! Well,
“ What must be, must,” as Shaksfeare’s Ilamlet hath it. But the
game of the French Emperor may be seen with half an eye by any one,
like us, who is not blinded, ay, and hoodwinked, by the spectacles of
Office. W’hen his clarets have invaded us, his cavalry will follow them,
and in our beerless and brainless state an easy conquest will be pos-
sible. After giving us his bottles, he will come and give us battle,
and then woe betide the dupes and dotards who have trusted him!
The Sun of England will set, and her fair daughters be left brotherless.
The flaunting flag of Liberty, of Britons long the boast, no more will
flutter o’er the sea that girts our native coast! The Gallic Cock will
crow on this side of the Channel, while ’neath the paw of the French
poodle will the British lion crouch, and whine pulingly for mercy with
his tail between his legs, however much the ’Tizer may try to get his
monkey up.

A “ Master or the Horse.”—Mr. Rarey.

EIGHTS OF LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

We hear a great deal about the Rights of Women; and it seems to-
be taken for granted, that there are certain rights which women in
general agree in claiming for themselves. Some difference, however,
as to what are and are not the rights of women, appears to prevail
among the ladies of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. In the House of
Lords we find, on the one hand, that—

“ Lord Dungannon presented a petition, signed by 300 women of Aylesbury and
its immediate neighbourhood, against any measure for legalising marriage with a
deceased wife’s sister. He assured their lordships that the strongest repugnance
prevailed among the women of England to any change in the law ; and the present-
petition was only one out of many hundreds with which their table would before
long be inundated. He trusted that any measure which might be introduced into
their lordships’ House for effecting a change in the law would meet with the same
fate as its predecessors.”

Whereupon, on the other hand,

“Lord Wodehouse presented a petition from-123 women of Aylesbury and 145
women of Cheltenham, in favour of the legalisation of marriage with a deceased
wife’s sister. He was confident that the majority of the women in the country
were anxious that the law should be altered, and he trusted that any measure
which would be introduced for that purpose would be carried.”

The ladies of Aylesbury appear to be as completely at variance
touching the Rights of Women in one particular, as their respective
champions, Lords Dungannon and Wodehouse are about those of
men in the corresponding respect. The ladies, on the one side, demand
the right of being allowed to marry their deceased sisters’ husbands.
Those on the other demand the right of continuing not to be allowed
to marry the husbands of their deceased sisters. In like manner the
lords are divided as to the Rights of Men; one noble lord requiring
for them the right to marry a deceased wife’s sister, the other the
right of being kept under restraint from doing any such thing. It may
almost be imagined that two parties of divines, who differ as to a point
of Christian morality, have been severally illustrating that edifying fact
by getting up an agitation in Aylesbury amongst the ladies on the
subject of their dissension, and have so far, happily, succeeded as to
divide them into two sects represented, respectively, by Lord Dun-
gannon.and Earl Wodehouse.

Does it not occur to Lord Dungannon and the ladies whose cause
he espouses, that the marriage of a lady with her deceased sister’s
husband, and that of a widower with his deceased wife’s sister are not
ceremonies which it is proposed to make obligatory on widowers and
surviving sisters ? The noble lord and his clients have the right of
refusing to contract such marriages if they please; cannot they be
content with that, and with minding their own business ?

INTERNATIONAL DUET.

Air—“ The Cobbler and tlie Tinker.”

“ Now we ’re met, let’s merry be! ”

Says the English to the French-man:

“ Let’s put aside all enmity.

And act with common sense, man!

I ’ll bring coal—”

French. And I ’il bring wine;

Fnglish. My freight be iron—

French. Silk he mine.

„ .7 J And, we’ll have no offence, man.

' \ Nay, we ’ll have no offence, man!

French. The ships of war I’ve lately made
You thought were for invasion;

I ’ll charter them for peaceful trade,

Eor which there’s more occasion.

So if you bring iron, I ’ll bring wine.

Fnglish. And if your freight’s silk, let coal he mine.
t> ,7 j And this be our invasion,
l" \ Our mutual invasion !

[{Exeunt, arm in arm, smoking the cigar of peace, and dancing
the cachouca of delight.

A Canvas-Backed Duck.

Lord Gainsborough’s son, Lord Campden, has been soundly
beaten by Mr. Deasy in the contest for Cork County. The awful
look of dismay put on by Campden, when he found that the Priests
could not seat him, has caused him to be christened “Gainsborough’s
Blue Boy.”

The Licensing System.—The Big Brewer is a Vulture, and the
Unpaid Magistrate instrumental to his rapacity is that Vulture's
Beak.