Punch (55.1868)

December 12, 1868.] PUNCH, OP THE LONDON CHAPIVAPI.

245

THE NEW HOUSE.

hat a promising House!
Young, Stronge, Hardy,
Birley, Bright, Wyllie,
and Wise, with Manners,
Power, and Hope !

What a useful House!
With its Smiths, Taylors,
Potters, Carters, Cart-
wrights, Arkwrights, Ba-
ker, Brewer, Miller,
Collier, Porester, Tur-
n er, and Goldsmid ! (Who
says there are no working-
men in the new Parliament ?)

What a Country House!
Containing Woods, Wells,
Hills, Beaches, Caves,
Moores, Mills, Bourne,
Dyke, Lea, Croft, Holt,
Grove, Loch, Forde,
Platt, Barrow, Heed,
Hay, and Stone !

What a familiar, free, and
easy House! With its
Richards, Williams, Ed-
wards, Henry, Percy,
Walter, Simon, Simeon,
Lawrence, Cecil, Cle-
ment, Gregory, Charley, Davie, and Dick !

What a Jolly House ! Tite and Merry, with Raikes, Gladstones,
good Fellowes, and Portman, with Cavendish and a Clay-, with
Lush, Bass, and Guinness, a Glass, and a Guest !

What a Serious House! Has it not Palmers, Monk, Chaplin,
Vickers, Kirk, and Graves?

What an Accommodating House! With Chambers, Hutt, Booth,
Davenport, Locke, and Bell, with Clowes, Cole, and Dyott, with
Pease, Whitbread, and a Round ! N.B. Prices Lowe.

What a Belligerent House ! Supplied with Whitworth, Enfield,
and Lancaster, and dealing both in Ball and Knox !

What a Sporting House ! Hunt, Delahunty, Scourfield, Mow-
bray, Fowler, Bagge, Bagwell, and, alas ! Pociiin !

What an Intellectual House ! Burke, Sheridan, "Walpole, Ers-
kine, Grenville, Wyndham, North, Peel, and Russell; Baxter,
Berkeley, Crichton, Disraeli, Hamilton, Mitford, Robertson,
and Sherlock ; Barry, Blake, Northcote, and West ; Gray,
Collins, Coleridge, Herbert, Hood, Otway, Campbell, Cowper
(not forgetting, Gilpin), Scott, Gower, Gore, Aytoun, Montgo-
mery, Shirley, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton and Pim !

What an Odd House ! With Murphy, Vance, Cox (without Box),
Brady (parted from dear Old Tait in the Upper Chamber),
Read and Wright (and here and there we see a cipher). Dowse,
De la Poeu, and Mackintosh, Tipping (although Bribery is strictly
prohibited), a Magniac, and a Melly, a Child, a Don, and a

pRENCH-man!

FELLOWS AND FELLOWS.

In the case of a Duke, an Earl, a Bishop, a Nobleman of any rank,
a Baronet, a ’Squire, a Barrister, a Clergyman, an Alderman even, the
victim of a railway accident, what would be thought of a reporter
writing as follows ?—

“ It was at lirst thought that some of the unfortunate fellow’s ribs were
broken. Such is not the case, though he has sustained some internal injury
about the chest.”

This is an extract from a contemporary’s account of an “ Alarming
Railway Collision.” The sufferer described as “ the unfortunate
fellow” was the driver of an express run into by a mineral train. No
doubt he was.an unfortunate fellow. Every fellow who meets with a
bad accident is an unfortunate fellow. But that is not what a reporter
would call any fellow, who had come to grief in a first-class carriage.
He would describe any such fellow as “ the unfortunate gentleman.”
A small shopkeeper, in a similar case, but second class, he would pro-
bably term “ the unfortunate man.” First Class and Second Class
passengers, correspond, in his nomenclature, respectively, to gentleman
and man. Third Class, mechanics and their like, answer to Fellows.
When he speaks of an engine-driver, hurt by a collision, as “ the un-
fortunate fellow,” he inspires us with mere sympathy for the engine-
driver, whereas, if he applied the same description to a bruised trades-
man well-to-do, not to mention a peer or a prelate, he would amuse
some of us, shock others, and rather astonish everybody. Yet, on the
principle of equality, we are all fellows, only some are finer fellows than
others ; but they are fellows never reported as such in our British
journals.

RESIGNATION OF MR. DTXION.

The following letter speaks for itself:

My Dear Punch, .

Montagu Corry is the best fellow m the world, but he does
not know'- everything yet. 1 find that he has sent you the same cir-
cular as that which I told him to furnish to the daily papers. Of course
you would know that there was a mistake. I hasten to send you the
one I want you to be kind enough to publish.

Ever yours,

Grosvenor Gate, 2nd December, 1S6S. B. D’Ixion.

“ If Parliament were sitting, I should not have adopted this course,
because I do not very well see how I could have done so. You don’t
•write to a man while he is in the same room with you. I should have
made a dignified speech, with some compassionate references to the
Member for Greenwich, and some professions of almost unspeakable
reverence for the House of Commons, and then I should have announced
that we held our places only until the Member for Greenwich and his
followers could arrange the disposition of their plunder.

“ But having resolved to retire as soon as the election returns could
be got in (I might certainly have waited to see whether there were a
re-aclion in Orkney and Shetland), 1 decided on doing so in the most
gentlemanly manner. I not only gave up office at once,. but I did not
advise Her Majesty to send for my dear and valued, if effete, friend,
the Earl Russell. I advised that a telegram should be dispatched
to Iiawarden Castle, and I can fancy the Member for Greenwich sitting
in a turret commanding the portcullis, and immediately on seeing the
electric boy, thundering out his orders that the bridge should be let
down in three ways at once. No doubt he had a gig waiting to take
him to the Station instantly.

“When, in the spring of this year, Her Majesty’s Government were
placed in a minority on the Irish Church question by a Parliament
which had been elected in the name of Lord Palmerston, who can
hardly be described with exactitude as a violent reformer, of course I
could not believe that a new Parliament to be called together, in the
name of the Member for Greenwich, from a new constituency to which
thousands of Liberals had been added, would confirm the vote of the
Palmerston Parliament. For people seldom do what they may reason-
ably be expected to do.

“ Having a right to dissolve, I dissolved, and not only were all means
taken by the Ministry to expedite the appeal to the people, but. all
means were taken by the Carlton and other clubs, and by all agencies at
their disposal, that such appeal should be decided in our favour, I am
told that the eminent judge, Mr. Justice Blackburn, is likely to be
able, from information which he will receive, to confirm this latter
statement. On this subject I know nothing. If there has been excess
of zeal I regret it, but no follower of mine ever learned it from my
teaching.

“ We have fought the election desperately hard, have floored a good
many notorious Liberals, and have secured a strong and compact
working minority—I suppose about 280. But the most rudimentary
acquaintance with arithmetic will enable even a Parliamentary Colonel
to comprehend that what remains, when the above sum is deducted from
658, places the Member for Greenwich in command of the situation—
my situation.

“ He has it. But 280 ‘ great-hearted gentlemen singing one song,’
as Mr. Browning writes, will make their voices heard in due time;
and I strongly advise a wise statesman, like the Member for Green-
wich, not to disregard their possible harmony. Meantime, like
Demosthenes, we will improve our vocalisation out in the cold.

“ I wished to give no unnecessary trouble. I go out with a politc-
: ness which has won me popular plaudit; and I may just remark that,
as if there is no division there can be no defeat, it will be competent to
me in some future stage of proceedings, to state that I am unaware
that the defenders of the Irish Church have ever been condemned by
1 the British Legislature.

“ We shall be perfectly ready, and I may say, happy, to discuss, at
any length, any proposition that may be submitted to the House; and,
while I think it probable that it may conduce to the just influence of
the Conservative party to debate with calmness, I shall be perfectly
prepared to avail myself of any weakness along the enemy’s line, and
to execute any Napoleonic strategy which may appear likely to be
beneficial to Religion, and to the Constitution of these happy Realms.

“ 1 will only add, having named Napoleon, that I did not select
this date for my own coup d'etat in compliment to my friend the Em-
peror of the French, but that the coincidence is as fortunate as it
was fortuitous.

Downing Street, Dec. 2.”

“ Benjamin D’Ixion.’

military examination question and answer.

When does a man’s case lie in a nutshell ?
When he’s a Colonel.