Punch (47.1864)

30

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

Sententious Gabby (on receiving his legal Fare from Temple Bar to FurnivaVs Inn).
“ Ah ! I only vish Sixpences was as Scarce as Gen’lemen ! ”

[July 16, 1864.

HOLY v. UNHOLY, OR ALLIANCE AGAINST
ALLIANCE.

When Thieves fall out, (the proverb runs,)
Honest men may expect their own;

But how when Thieves fall in, with guns,

Sabres and trumpets, (though unblown) ?

Despair, poor Poland, scarred and sacked.

Now that the thieves who carved thy soil,

Renewing their unholy pact.

Swear each to guard the other’s spoil.

And thou, Yenetia, gnaw thy chains,

Now Kaiser mates with Czar and King;

Meet guardians of stolen gains,

Black eagles linking wing to wing.

Pause, Prussia, pen and pipe in hand.

And ask what thine, what Bismarck’s ends;

When, bode of ill to Yaterland,

Thy King calls Czar and Kaiser friends.

The Thieves fall in : up, honest men,

If old fights must once more be won :

Link hands, nor, once linked, loose again.

Till Thieves fall out and right be done !

EARL GREY IN A BELT.

Before the Lords’ Committee on the Belfast Improve-
ment Bill, one of the parties concerned, a Mr. Rea, wanting
to speak, and being desired by Earl Grey to be quiet, got
excited, and is reported to have said :—

“ I am a subject of Her Majesty, and no belted Earl shall tyran-
nise over me.”

Prom the above it appears that Earl Grey, when he
presides over or attends a Committee of the House of
Lords, is accustomed to wear a belt. There is nothing to
be said as to that, except that, if it is so, there is a point
of resemblance between the noble Earl and a rat-catcher.
But then what is there in Earl Grey’s belt that particularly
determines Mr. Rea not to submit to any tyranny from the
wearer F Mr. Rea had to be walked out, however, by two
belted policemen.

EXTORTION UNDER GOVERNMENT.

To John Arthur Roebuck, Esq.

Dear Tearem,

Whenever any vermin are engaged in doing mischief behind
the curtain in official quarters, you are the fellow to go in and rout
them out. Before this reaches you, very likely you will have been
induced to raise your honest bark in the House of Commons by some
letters which have lately appeared in the Times, whence it appears that
there is some nasty creature in the Inland Revenue Office at work in
extorting legacy duty from the representatives and descendants of
parties by whom it is alleged to have keen left unpaid many years ago—
as many as forty. Down come demands of this kind on executors of
j executors for principal and interest to the amount of nearly three hun-
dred pounds. Records relative to the original executorship have been
lost or destroyed; the past payment of the duty cannot be proved, and
people who know and could know no more about it than the Man hr
the Moon, are fain to submit to the exaction, and pay the whole of the
money rather than risk the cost of a defence against a Government
prosecution. See the Times of Thursday, July 7th, in case you happen
to have overlooked these monstrous cases of legal extortion—if it is
legal. Read the letter, entitled “• Hardships of Executors.”

Talk of the oppression exercised by despotic governments; talk of
any imposition enforced upon the subjects of an Austrian, Russian, or
Prussian tyrant! . Talk of any atrocity, short of bodily torture, inflicted
on the people of his late Majesty of Naples! As for the Pope, his
Holiness would doubtless feel his paternal heart lacerated by the mere
supposition, that he was capable of permitting such cruel injustice as
that which is, as I have told you, practised by some vile underling in
the Inland Revenue Office. To pattern it we should have to go to
| Turkey—the Turkey of Bajazet and Amurath.

, L hat kind of a creature is it that has set himself to the odious work
of ferreting out these obsolete claims of the Government on persons
who are innocent- of any knowledge of thernp Is it some clerk who
seeks promotion by the ostentation of a pitiless zeal ? Or is it a wretch
who takes a malignant , delight in improving the opportunity that his
situation affords him of subjecting as many people as he can to annoy-1

ance, distraction, and perhaps even misery and ruin? How comes it
that he has been suffered—he oannot have been commissioned—to do
this dirty work for his superiors? You will doubtless elicit, if you
have not elicited, an answer to these questions from the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, or some other responsible party. What brute is
it that is either amusing himself, or trying to get on, by extortion in the
Inland Revenue Office ? Eind him, Tearem ! Eetch him out! Shake
him, boy ! Sess ! And believe me, yours ever,

P.S. Who now will ever dare to accept the office of executor, so long
as the Inland Revenue Office comes down upon an executor’s executor
for legacy duty on property which he never dreamt of ?

THE LATE MR. WILKS.

The sudden decease of a political writer and speaker, Mr. Washing-
ton Wilks, has produced an appeal to the public on behalf of his widow
and six children. This appeal we heartily second, in the interest of those
whose helplessness demands all kindly aid, and without any approbation
of the claim set up that Mr. W. Wilks sacrificed his time to the making
speeches at public meetings “ with a total disregard to his health or
pecuniary interests.” No husband or father has a right to earn such a
plaudit. ' He would have seen this, had he lived longer, and would have
acted up to his conviction, for he was a very earnest man. Help for
the widow and her children may be sent to the Honorary Secretary of
the Fund, 65, Fleet Street, ana they have the strongest claim upon
those who will, we hope, on this occasion deserve the name of Ultra-
Liberals.

Extensive Sale of an Ex-Shakspearian Committeeman.

“ I Don’t think,” said a would-be literary Duke, “ you can find
a single Irish character in all the works of Shakspeare ? ”

“ Yes, you can,” boldly ejaculated young Edmund, “for I can cite
two—Miss O’Phelia, and Corry O’Lanus.”

The noble Duke instantly started for Manchester.