Punch (61.1871)

aug! st 12 1871.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

57

Holiness should not go to Iona, and restore its glories, perhaps the
Duke of Argyll (owner of Iona) will say. To be sure, Iona and
Rome had not much in common.

Sir Wilfrid Lawson spoke with tact and delicacy on the ques-
tion whether the Privacy of Royalty does not tend to make Repub-
licanism possible; and the Premier, gracefully eulogising the
Sovereign, promised, on her behalf, that the Q,ueen would exert
herself, to the utmost of her power, to fulfil Public Functions. If
what has just happened in Ireland does not convince the authorities
how much the Queen's subjects desire an opportunity of showing
their loyalty, nothing will. " A Queen's face gives grace." (Scots
proverb.)

Friday. Lord Overstone asked again about the Berkshire
Baffledom. Answers apparently good, really evasive.

The Army Bill was passed by the Lords. It was explained to be
now merely a Bill for the Compensation of Officers. Since Justice
Overdoes Warrant, known to readers of Ben Jonson, there has
never been a document that has produced such an effect on the
Unwise as the Royal Warrant in this matter.

We finished the Ballot Bill Committee, and a most becoming
tribute was paid from the Conservative bench to Mr. Forster for
his courtesy throughout the discussion. When W. E. G. takes his
coronet—but let us not anticipate.

Compensation for a debate on the Washington Treaty was amply
afforded by a masterly speech from Sir Rotjndell Palmer, to whom
Mr. Punch unhesitatingly applies Lord Frederick Verisophfs
eulogy on Shakspeare. " He is a cley-ver man." Mr. Whalley
said that Popery had been the root of the Alabama difficulty, so we
ended the week good-humouredly.

LAW-MAKING AND LAW-SHAKING.

There are two kinds of Parliamentary driving,

And both at this moment appear to be thriving.

There's the art of so tooling the Session's Bills,

That a block St. Stephen's thoroughfare fills.

There are Bills by the dozen, all in a ruck,

Each in the way of the other stuck,

With the drivers slashing, and pulling, and bawling,

Opposition conductors bad names calling,

The traffic stopped, and the bystanders wond'ring

At the singular talent shown in blundering—

Till it's only by dint of cutting and maiming,

Flinging loads over, and horses laming,

That of all the train that started so merrily,

Here and there one to the goal drags wearily;

And the end, after all the fights and dead locks, is

The general discredit of those on the boxes.

That's the way of driving Bills in Parliament,

Which all who don't like delay, jangle, and jar lament.

The other style of driving I mean,

Is driving through Acts of Parliament clean:

And that is an art which, in case of a bad law,

One might own meritorious, e'en in a Bradlalgh.

But one don't so much like, when the Act made away with

Is an Act to keep King Mob at bay with,

When through the hole by your demagogue driven

A way to the deluge of mob-law's given,

To o'ersweep knowledge and right and reason ;

Drown sense as aristocratic treason;

Prove England's best posture upside down,

And the right thing to stand on, not feet, but crown.

When, with these views, demagogic forces

Through an Act boast of driving their coach and horses,

I'd fain see more substance in th' Act,

Or its letter with more of its spirit backed.

For Bradlaugh and Odger aren't quite the pair

That the British Lion to power should bear,

From the arms of the Roughs in Trafalgar Square.

That's a style of driving through Acts of Parliament
Which those who wish splendour to Britain's star lament.
But query if Ministers don't show the way to't,
Who threaten the mob first, and then give way to't.

Unfortunate Choice.

If the comfort of the soldiers had been the main consideration
with the War Office, the authorities there would certainly not have
fixed on Berks as the best place for the September muster, but rather
on Beds, or, perhaps, for self-evident commissariat reasons, Oxon.

STORKS AND STICKS.

ere 's Card well determined
that England shall feel
Her protection not left to a

mere Garde Mobile.
'' For defence not defiance,"

we stand like a wall,
And the army we trust to's

not mobile at all.
So stoutly it sticks to its

post and its place,
It cannot be moved thirty

miles from its base !
So the Berkshire manoeu-
vres are knocked on the
head,

And three little Aldershots

planned in their stead.
There are reasons enough

and too many—the sole
One there is n't's the
break-down of Storks
and Control.
There's the fear of the
weather, the chance of a
pelt,

In which a corps d'armee

might easily melt,
Or require us to serve an
umbrella per man!
There's the terms asked by Pickford for leading the van;
Then there's the late harvest—a fact which Storks mourns ;
But men can't risk treading on other men's corns :
In short, between crops, teams, and tricks of the seasons,
The Country has choice of a score of good reasons,
By which, while to blame no department shall prove,
'Tis clear that the troops can't and oughtn't to move.
So John Bull shrugs his shoulders in blank resignation,
And owns there is need for reorganisation ;
Not so much, though, of privates or officers either,
As of blundering departments that take heed for neither.
And asks, of all ills that his Army have curst,
If Purchase be really and truly the worst ?
If so trivial a cause Army movement so clogs
In King Stork's reign, could things be much worse in King
Log's ?

A SERVICEABLE SOCIETY.

Many happy returns of the other day to the Society for the Sup-
pression of Vice. It then completed its sixty-eighth year, and held
its annual meeting. The Report of its Committee " recorded a
series of twenty-three successful prosecutions," including, suffice it
to say, the conviction of certain " advertisers, who, by receiving
payment through the post, hope to escape detection." The vile
rogues punished, the seizures of base photographs, and other like
wares, effected by this Society's exertions, are something consider-
able to show for a very little money ; £102 12s. annual subscriptions,
and donations £344 10s. Its revenue not paying its expenses, it is
in debt as much as £650, against which amount is to be placed the
claim which this Society has on Society at large; one that ought to
be settled. The Committee of the Society for the Suppression of
Vice clearly deserve the thanks voted to them by the meeting '' for
their energy and perseverance in carrying out the objects of the
Society with the very limited means at their disposal." Only fancy
the Government, with the not very limited means, comprised in the
amount of military and naval estimates, at their disposal, being able
to exhibit in return for their outlay, as much in proportion as the
Committee of this economical and effective Society is. The re-elec-
tion of that meritorious Committee, and the other Officers of the
Association whose affairs it so ably administers, concluded business
at the anniversary assembly of the Society for the Suppression of
Vice ; the gentlemen re-elected, a punster, not having the fear of
the Society before his eyes, would perhaps remark, including the
Vice-Presidents.

Petroleum and Police.

Communist incendiarism in Paris has originated a new news-
paper-heading for reports of fires—" Petroliana." The Petrol,
perhaps, in that capital, would afford fewer anecdotes if the Patrol
were more efficient.