Punch (58.1870)

PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVARI. [February 19, 1870.

"LET WELL ALONE!"

Swell. " Ah—what's youb Fare to Hampstead bv the—ah—New Law? ! "

Cabby. " Oh, I don't Know nothin' 'bout no New Laws, Sir !—same Old Fare, Sir—' Leave it to you,' Sib ! "

ROCHEFORT AND REVOLUTION.

No; History does not repeat itself. For Camille Desmoulins
she gives us Rochefort ; for I]Ami du Peuple, the Marseillaise; for
the Attack on the Tmleries, the Barricade of Belleville.

If History repeated itself, why was the Revolution of 1830 so
different from that of 1789 ? that of 1848 so different from that
of 1830?

Does not all this show that even France, ready as she is to " descend
into the street," is gradually learning the folly of flying to anarchy as
the escape from misrule, and declines to help the triumph of a Roche-
fort, even though it may be the downfall of a Louis Napoleon ?
In '89 the Revolution cost the lives of a Royal Family, the best
blood of the nation, and a European War, and needed a Napoleon
the Great to end it. In 1830 the Revolution cost three days' street-
fighting, and was closed by a Louis Philippe. In 1848 the Revolu-
tion was set up by a coup de main, and put down by the Nephew of
the Uncle.

It looks like it.

Rochefort has been sentenced, and Order continues to reign in
Paris.

Rochefort has been arrested, and Louis Napoleon still sits at
the Tuileries.

Armed Insurrection can find no better head than half-witted
Pleurens to flourish his sword-cane, and fire off his revolver at
nobody in particular. No stronger hands but those of the few score
gamins who threw up sham-barricades for the police to take, and
scampered before the sticks and small-swords of the Municipal
Guards.

It has not even needed the presence of soldiers to put down this
feeble fiz of revolutionary effervescence.

France definitely declines to borrow Rochefort's Lanterne to look
for her honest man by.

She accepts Qllivler, and his coadjutors, and the substitution of
Parliamentary for Personal rule, as more beneficial means of restoring

her to the self-government she has been content for a time to abdicate,
and for which she can not better show her fitness than by her contempt
for such meneurs as Rochefort, and such organs as his Marseillaise.

A RISING FAMILY.

Under the heading " A Pluralist" the Times enumerates the good
things that fell to the lot in life of the Rev. T. H. Sparke, son of an
ex-Bishop of Ely. Here is the list:—

" In 1818, as soon as he was of age to be admitted into priest's orders, he
was 'collated' to a prebendal stall in Ms father's cathedral, appointed to the
rectory of Stretham (value £756), and the sinecure vicarage of Littlebury,
Essex (value not known) ; in the next year his father bestowed on him the
vicarage of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, the value of which is given in
CrocJcford"s Clerical Directory as £770; in 1824 he was nominated to the
Chancellorship of Ely Cathedral; in 1827 to the rectory of Leverington, Cam-
bridgeshire (value, according to the same authority, £2100). According to
" Crockford," his stall in Ely was of the annual value of £307, which he held
for upwards of fifty years ; and for nearly thirty years he was also rector of
two other livings, Gunthorpe and Bale, near Thetford."

Can we have a better illustration than is furnished by such a list of
the proverbial tendency of " Sparks " to " fly upwards ? "

On Taxation.

A Tax on powder is fair. Those who use powder as a luxury won't
mind paying their shot for it. The tax is only on powdered footmen:
babies, when powdered, don't come under the Act.

To Correspondents.

Plain English.—There will be no departure from the announce-
ment made in No. 1356, and to which all Correspondents are referred.