Punch (56.1869)

Mabcii 20, I860.] PUNCH, OR THE LONDON

CHARIVARI. 1C9

...

GULLS BY SEA AND LAND.


When we ’re drawing a Bill to save sea-birds—
Whose suff’rings no doubt deserve pity—

Why don’t some one bring in a Bill
Eor protecting the Gulls in the City ?

These poor Gulls are just as much shot at,
Plucked as bare of their plumes, though they go
Not to deck ladies’ hats, but line pockets
Of Projector, Director, & Co.

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You will find just as many lame ducks,

As many poor geese who have bled.
Limping sadly around Capel Court,

As you’ll find about Tlamborough Head.

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And in both city-court, and sea-crag,

While fish swim, and. shares rise and fall,
You will find hungry Cormorants watching,
Who find no prey too great or too small.


Above all you’ll discover that puffin’

Has an equal attraction for most
Who follow their game in the City,

As for snobs who hit fowl on the Coast.

l


If ’tis well to protect sea-gulls’ eggs,

"Why leave land-gulls’ eggs, let me ask it—
Whose produce was counted ere hatched,

To be smashed, often, all in one basket ?


If we think it our duty to shelter
Young sea-gulls unable to fly.

Why let unfledged land-gulls risk necks,
On paper-wings soaring sky-high ?


If a “ close ’’-time for sea-gulls is fixed,

When ’tis penal the creatures to “ pot,”

What a blessing a “ close’’-time would be,

That would keep Land-Gulls safe out of shot!

TERRIFIC APPARITION

Seen during the Recent Fog at Westminster.

The land-gulls “ close ’’-time to begin,
Like that of the sea-gulls—let’s say—
Trom that highly appropriate date
Of April the first—All Tools’ Day!

PUNCH’S ESSENCE OF PARLIAMENT.

March 8. Monday. The Lords fixed their holidays. They agreed
to rise on Triday, the 19th instant, and meet again on Monday, the
5th April. The intervening time Punch supposes that they 'will expend
in talking about the Boat Race, and the arguments against the Irish
•Church Bill. The water coaches will have done their work splendidly,
but how far Mr. Disraeli will succeed into coaching his men to pull
together, and not catch crabs, is another matter.

One has not heard much of Oriel College, Oxford, lately. In old
days there was a capital parody on Roderick Vicli Alpin Dim, wherein
that hero, transformed into a Don, who had fallen in love with Miss
Ellen Douglas, Says,

“ Thank Heaven, there’s one man whom I don’t sec about her,

Her townsman, the tutor of Oriel, Fitzjames,

For though of the two I am somewhat the stouter,

His legs are far neater, much older his claims.

Look on this tutor true,

Ellen, for love of you,

Just metamorphosed from blacksmith to beau,

Hair combed and breeches new,

Grace-altered Roderick Dhu,

While every gownsman cries, wondering, IIo ! ho 1 ”

But now there is a Bill for enabling a layman to be appointed to the
Provostship of Oriel. L9RD Derby, Chancellor, does not object to
"this, but to the way in which a lay provostship is to be endowed. The
matter does not seem to concern the entire universe, and Mr. Punch
would hardly have mentioned it but for the sake of displaying the
magnificent memory that can bear in mind a squib which he read forty
years ago.

Lord Russell made a sensible speech, urging a general system of
popular education, and Lord Salisbury could not see any connection
between the diminution of crime and the increase of education. Crime
was a matter of moral depravity, and no teaching would make a
criminal depart from his original bias. The way to diminish crime was
to diminish poverty. As thus boldly and baldly put, the Marquis’s

proposition may shock, but it is not to be dismissed with a jeer. The
Bishop oe London knew better than to jeer, but he reproduced the
idea in a Christian form.

We read, for the Third Time, the Bill for doing away with what
Consul Richard Burton, in his delightful new book on the Brazil
(with the religious protest by his Catholic wife, the editor, against its
anti-Catholic and Mormon doctrines) calls one of the greatest insults
ever offered by a strong nation to a weak one, the assertion of our
right to seize slavers in Brazilian waters. Why, by the way, don’t
we invent the Brazil ? Here is a glorious country, rich in gold and
diamonds, and much better things, and only in want of development. ;
Willing, moreover, to be rescued from speculators and jobbers, and
set in the right groove. Mr. Punch adds with satisfaction that our
Coffin Squadron, that of the West Coast of Africa, has been reduced,
and is to be kept on foot only for the purposes of trade. This note does 1
not mean that he thinks, as many well-informed persons do, that the
Brazil is on the West Coast of Africa, quite the reverse, it is on the
East Coast of South America, unless there has been any alteration.

Mr. Childers moved the Navy Estimates. There is a reduction of
above a Million.

Tuesday. The Duke of Somerset pitched into the Missionaries in
China, who are always getting into scrapes, and calling in armed force
to help them out. Of course, a young sea-officer is delighted to be
asked to let fly at the Chinese, and then a complication occurs.
Missionaries were either rogues or enthusiasts, and it was no use
talking to them, they must be forbidden to do mischief. This is
coarsely put, but there is truth in it. The Missionary is not a man of
the world, he believes that anybody who cannot see the truth of what
is taught at the Baptist or Independent College must be a fool, and
therefore incontinently brays him in a mortar. Some folks don’t like
braying; that of Exeter Hall, or otherwise. The Chinese had a religion
and a highly-finished literature when we were running about stained
with woad, and burning children to idols, and they do not see that
a third-rate English preacher should rush into a Chinese town, and
begin to make fun of the objects of its worship. Suppose a Chinese
Missionary arrived at Charing Cross, ran down to the Abbejq and told 1