Punch or The London charivari (1.1841)

162

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

PARLIAMENTARY MASONS.--PARLIAMENTARY PICTURES-

Was there ever anything so lucky that the strike of the masons
ihould have happened at this identical juncture ! Parliament is pro-
rogued. Now, deducting Sir Robert Peel, physician, with his train of;
apothecaries and pestle-and-mortar apprentices, who, until February j
next, are to sit cross-legged and try to think, there are at least six j
hundred and thirty unemployed members of the House of Commons, i
turned upon the world with nothing, poor fellows ! but grouse before
them. Some, to be sure, may pick their teeth in the Gardens of the
Tuileries—some may even now venture to exercise their favourite elbow
at Baden-Baden,—but with every possible and probable exception, there
will yet be hundreds of unemployed law-makers, to whom time will be a

heavy porter's burden.

We have a plan which, for its originality, should draw down upon us
the gratitude of the nation. It is no other than this : to make all Members
of Parliament, for once in their lives at least, useful. The masons, hired
to build the. new temples of Parliament, have struck. The hard-handed
ingrates,—let them go ! We propose that, during the prorogation at
least, Members of Parliament, should, like beavers, build their own
Houses. In a word, every member elected to a seat in Parliament should
be compelled, like Robinson Crusoe, to make his own furniture before he
could sit down upon it.

Have we not a hundred examples of the peculiar fitness of the task,
in the habits of what in our human arrogance we call the lower ani-
mals ? There is many a respectable spider who would justly feel hiin-
*elf calumniated by any comparison between him and any one of
twenty Parliamentary lawyers we coiud name ; yet the spider spins
its own web, and seeks its own nook of refuge from the Reform Broom
of Molly the housemaid. And then, the tiny insect, the ant—that
living, silent monitor to unregarding men—doth it not make its own
galleries, build with toilsome art its own abiding place ? Does not the
mole scratch its own chamber—the carrion kite build its own nest!
Shall. cuckoos and Members of Parliament alone be lodged at others'
pains ?

Consider the wasp, oh, Stanley ! mark its nest of paper—{it is said,
on wasp's paper you are wont to write your thoughts on Ireland)—and
resolutely seize'a trowel !

Look to the bee, oh, Colonel Sibthorp! See how it elaborates its
firgin wax, how it shapes its luscious cone—and though we would not
trust you to place a brick upon a brick, nevertheless you may, under
instruction, mix the mortar !

Pohder on the rat and its doings, most wise Burdutt—see how craftily
it makes its hole—and though you are too age-stricken to carry a hod, yon
may at least do th.is much—sift the lime.

But wherefore thus particular—why should we dwell on individuals ?
Pole-cat, weasel, ferret, hedgehog, with all' your vermin affinities, come
forth, and staring reproachfully in the faces of all prorogued Members, bid
them imitate your zeal and pains, and—the masons having struck—build
their .Houses for themselves.

(We make this proposal in no thoughtless—no bantering spirit.. He
can see very little into the most transparent mill-stone who believes
that we pen these essays—essays that will endure and glisten as long, ay
as long as the freshest mackerel—if he think that we sit down to this
our weekly labour in a careless lackadaisical humour. By no means.
Like Sir Lytton Bulwer, when he girds up his loins to write an
apocryphal comedy, we approach our work with graceful solemnity.
Like Sir Lytton, too, we always dress for the particular work we have
iu hand. Sir Lytton wrote " Richelieu" in a harlequin's jacket
(sticking pirate's pistols in his belt, ere he ,y,alorously took whole scenes
from a French melo-drauia) : we penned our last week's essay in a suit
ot old canonicals, with a tie-wig askew upon our beating temples, and
are at this moment'• cased in a court-suit of cut velvet, with our hair
curled, our whiskers crisped, and a masonic apron decorating our middle
man. Having subsided -into our chair—it is iu most respects like the j
porphyry piece of furniture of the Pope—and ,our housekeeper having
played the Dead March in Saul on our chamber organ (Bulwer wrote

The Sea Captain" to the preludizing of a Jew's-harp), we enter on
our this week's labour. We state thus much, that our readers may
know with what pains we prepare ourselves for them. Besides, when
Bulwer thinks it right that the world should know that the idea of " La
Valliere" first hit him in the rotonde of a French diligence, modest as we
are, can we suppose that the world will not be anxious to learn in what
coloured coat we think, and whether, when we scratch our head to assist
the thought that sticks by the way, we displace a velvet cap or a Truetitt's
scalp ?)

Reader, the above parenthesis may be skipped or not. Read not a line
of it—the omission will not maim our argument. So to proceed.

If we cast our eyes over the debates of the last six months, we shall find
that hundreds of members of the House of Commons have exhibited the
m use extraordinary powers of ill-directed labour. And then their capacity
of endurance ! Arguments that would have knocked down any reasonable

elephant have touched them no more than would summer gnats. Well,
why not awake this steeping strength ? Why not divert a mischievous po-
tency into beneficial action ? Why should we confine a body of men to
making laws, when so many of them might be more usefully employed in
wheeling barrows ? Now there is Mr. PLUMrraE, who has done so much
to make English Sundays respectable—would he not be working far more
enduring utility with pickaxe or spade than by labouring at enactments to
stop the flowing of the Thames on the Sabbath ? Might not D'Israeli be
turned into a very jaunty carpenter, and be set to the light interior work of
both the Houses? His logic, it is confessed, will support nothing ; but we
think he would be a very smart hand at a hat-peg.

As for much of the joinery-work, could we have prettier mechanics than
Sir James Graham and Sir Edward Knatchbuxi. : When we remember
their opinions on the Corn Laws, and see that they are apart of the cabinet
which has already shown symptoms of some approaching alteration of the
Bread Tax—when we consider their enthusiastic bigotry for everything as it
is, and Sir Robert Peel's small, adventurous liberality, his half-bashful
homage to the spirit of the age—sure we are that both Graham and
Knatchbull, to remain component members of the Peel Cabinet, must
be masters of the science of dove-tailing; and hence, the men of men for
the joinery-work of the new Houses of Parliament.

Again how many members from their long experience in the small jobbery
of committees — from their profitable knowledge of the mysteries of private
bills and certain other unclean work which may, if he please, fall to the lot
of the English senator—how many of these lights of the times might build
small monuments of their genius in the drains, sewerage, and certain con-
veniences required by the deliberative wisdom of the nation ? We have seen
the plans of Mr. Barry, and are bound to praise the evidence of his taste
and genius; but we know that the structure, however fair and beautiful to
the eye, must have its foul places ; and for the dark, dirty, winding ways oi
Parliament—reader, take a list of her Majesty's Commons, and running
your finger down their names, pick us out three hundred able-bodied labour-
ers—three hundred stalwart night workmen in darkness and corruption.
We ask the country, need it care for the strike of Peto's men (the said Peto,
by the way, is in no manner descended from FaLtaff's retainer), when
there is so much unemployed labour, hungering only for the country's
good ?

We confess to a difficulty in finding among the members of the present
Parliament a sufficient number of stone-squarers. When we know that
there are so few among them who can look upon more than one aide of a
question, we own that the completion of the building may be considerably
delayed by employing only members ot Parliament as square workmen : the
truth is/Having never been accustomed to the operation, they will need con-
siderable instruction in the art. Those, however, rendered incapable, by
habit and nature, of the task, may cast rubbish and carry a hod.

We put it to the patriotism of members of Parliament, whether they ought
not immediately to throw themselves into the arms of Peto and Grissell, with an
enthusiastic demand for tools. If they be not wholly insensible of the wants of
the nation and of their own dignity, Monday monring'^ sun will shine upon every
man of her Majesty's majority, for once laudably employed in the nation's good.
How delightful then to saunter near the works—how charming then to listen to
members of Parliament! What a picture of senatorial industry! For an Irish
speech by Stanle\, have we not the more dulcet music of his stone-cutting saw.-1
Instead of an oration from Goulbckn, have we not the shrill note of his ungreased
parliamentary barrow? For the " hear, hear" of Plujipthe, the more accord-
ant tapping of the hammer—for the " cheer" from Ingus, the sweeter chinit of
the mason's chisel?

Aud then the moral and physical good acquired by the workmen themselves!
After six days' toil, there is scarcely one of them who will not feel himself won-
derfully enlightened on the wants aud feelings of labouring man. They will
learn sympathy in the most efficient manner—by the sweat of their brow. Plea-
sant, indeed, 'twill be to see Castlereagh ieau on his axe, and beg, with Sly, for
" a pot of the smallest ale."

Having, we trust, remedied the evils of the mason's strike—having shewn tliat
the fitness of things calls upon the Commons, in the present dilemma, to build
their owu house—we should feel it unjust to the government not to acknowledge
the good taste which, as we learn, has directed that an estimate be takeu of the
disposable space on the walls of the new buildings, to be devoted to the exalted
work of the historical painter. Records of the greatness of England are to endure
in undying hues on the walla of Parliament.

This is a praiseworthy object, but to render it important and instructive, the
greatest judgment must be exercised iu the selection of subjects; which, for our-
selves, we «ould have to illustrate the wisdom aud benevolence of Parliament.
How beautifully would several of Duke of Wellington's speeches paint 1 For
instance, his portrait of a famishing Englishman, the drunkard and the idler, no
other man (according to his grace) famishing in England! And then the Duke's
view of the shops of butchers, aud poulterers, and bakers—all in the Dutch st\le
—by which his grace has lately proved, that if there be distress, it can certainly
not be for want of comestibles ! But the theme is too suggestive to be carried
' out in a single paper.

We tiust that portraits of members will be admitted. Burdett and Graham.
halt-whig, half-tory, in the style of Death and the Lady, will make pretty com-
poniou pictures.

j To do full pictorial justice to the wisdom-of the senate, Parliament will want a
| peculiar artist : tiiat gifted man can be nc othet than the ar.iat to Punch!