Lord Shaftesbury's "Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act" (1864) provided

that a chimney sweeper convicted of causing or allowing any person under

the age of twenty-one to ascend or descend a chimney or enter a flue for

the purpose of sweeping it or extinguishing a fire might be sent to

prison for a term not exceeding six months with or without hard labour.

But master chimney sweeps still continued to "snap their sooty fingers

at the law." In the issue of March 2, 1867, _Punch_ reproduces the

following business "card":--

"William Burges, Chimney Sweeper, No. 36 Bolton Street, Chorley,

flatters himself with having boys of the best size for such

branch of business suitable for a Tunnel or Chimney, and that it is

now in his power to render his assistance in a more extensive

manner than he usually has done. He also carries his boys from room

to room occasionally, to prevent them staining or marking any room

floor with their feet."

In short, there was good ground for the complaint that while a great

deal had been said about our working men, but little notice had been

taken of our working children. A discussion of the "half-time system" at

a working men's club in which another enlightened and benevolent peer,

Lord Lyttelton, took part, is accordingly welcomed as sensible and

opportune:--

"By this system," said Lord Lyttelton, "which compelled every

parent who chose to send his child to work also to send him or her

half the day to school, a very useful compromise had been effected

between the demands of labour and education.... This system, as

carried out in the manufacturing towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire,

had resulted in the increased education, and consequent improved

life and conduct, of their inhabitants, as had been manifested

during the late cotton famine, and in many other ways."

Gentlemen of England who live at home at ease perhaps have little

notion of how hard some children work, and how needful it appears

to make some effort to relieve them. From a Blue-Book he produced

at the meeting we have mentioned, Lord Lyttelton

"Gave an instance of a little girl engaged in a brickyard near

Birmingham from 6 A.M. to 8 P.M., only having fifteen minutes for

breakfast, and thirty minutes for dinner, no time for tea, and

during one day she would have to catch and throw to her neighbour

fifteen tons of bricks."

What a mercy it would be to such poor little working children if

their fathers were compelled to send them every day to school!

[Sidenote: _White Slaves in the Black Country_]

Towards the end of the same year the Town Council of Sheffield met to

consider the report of the Children's Employment Commission relative to

the overworking of children in the trades of that town:--

According to that Report, a boy, only nine years old, living at

Wadsley, four or five miles from Sheffield, was obliged by his

father to work as cellar-boy in one of the furnaces, on most days

of the week from six in the morning to six or seven in the evening,

and on Saturdays from three in the morning till three in the

afternoon. This enforced labour at a high temperature would, if

only occasional, appear to be equivalent to a somewhat long

compulsory innings in the Turkish bath. Imposed nearly every day,

it may be considered by some who do not consider too deeply, to

constitute a combination of the Turkish bath with Turkish tyranny,

and tyranny about as barbarous as ever was practised in Turkey.

[Illustration: A DISTINCTION

THE "GOOD PARSON" (to applicant for instruction in the Night School):

"Have you been confirmed, my boy?"

BOY (hesitating): "Please, sir--I--don't know."

PARSON: "You understand me; has the Bishop laid his hands on you?"

BOY: "Oh, no, sir, but his Keeper have, sir--very often, sir!"]

Naturally, such outspoken comments gave offence, and in 1866 and again

in 1868 _Punch_ was very much in the black books of the Black Country

for what he said on the state of morals, manners and education among the

workers of that region of coal and iron. The controversy began with some

lines, "The Queen in the Black Country," which were inspired by the

inauguration of Prince Albert's statue at Wolverhampton. These gave pain

to certain susceptible inhabitants of that town. _Punch's_ reply was to

quote from the report of the Children's Employment Commission of 1864 on

the trades in the Wolverhampton district, showing that all the large

employers lived far away from the workpeople they employed; that a few

ministers of religion were almost the only representatives of the upper

class resident in the "Black Country"; that large numbers of children,

youths, young persons and women worked the same long hours as the men,

from 6 or 7 A.M. to 9, 10 and 11 P.M.; that among them little girls were

often kept bellows-blowing fourteen hours a day.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Laws to Protect Children_]

In January, 1868, _Punch_ was accused of being a Rip Van Winkle, who had

been asleep for half a century, because when Bishop Selwyn was

translated from New Zealand to Lichfield he had published some verses

ending up with the question, "What's the savage o'er sea to the savage

at home?" His answer was to say that he wished he _could_, like Rip Van

Winkle, fall asleep not over the Black Country only, but over every

manufacturing district of England, to wake in fifty years and find

education for ignorance, thrift and comfort for improvidence and

squalor, gentleness and refinement for coarseness and brutality among

men and women; health and happiness for sickliness and suffering,

premature decrepitude and deadening of mind among children. But the

facts were too strong for him:--

We never said, or meant to say, that things were as bad in the

Black Country now as they were fifty, forty, or twenty years ago.

We are quite ready to believe, with a more courteous and kindly

Black Country correspondent than Mr. Lawley, that much has been

done, and that much is doing, for religion, education and

civilization in that region as everywhere else.

* * * * *

If _Mr. Punch_ has been unfair to the Black Country, he has, at least,

been sinning in good company. Hear what Mr. Justice Keating spoke from

the Bench, in a Black Country case, not three weeks ago:--

"I cannot help noticing the most deplorable state of matters shown

by the evidence of these girls. We call ourselves a Christian

people and pride ourselves upon being a civilized nation. These two

girls have said that they could neither read nor write; that they

had never in their lives been at school, church or chapel; that

they had never heard of the Bible; and, as the learned counsel had

suggested, in all probability they had never heard of a Divine

Being. We send out missionaries to the heathen, but what avails all

this when we see such a state of things at home?"

The introduction of the Metalliferous Mines Bill in the Lords in July,

1872, prompted _Punch_ to express his ironic satisfaction:--

Would you be surprised to hear that we already protect women and

children to this extraordinary extent? No children under 15 are

sent down into the mines, and women are not worked more than twelve

hours, and--will you believe it?--not at all on Sundays.

In the same month the Lords read a second time the Bill for protecting

children against those who cruelly train them to become acrobats. There

is hardly a single mention throughout all these years of efforts to

secure humane treatment for working children in which the honoured name

of Lord Shaftesbury is not prominent, as it was in this debate. There

was, as _Punch_ says, no sentimentality about this interference, and we

ought not to leave children to be tortured for the delectation of the

lower class of folks, well-dressed or not, who are pleased by unnatural

acrobatic feats.

It gave _Punch_ no pleasure to write sermons on Blue Books, least of all

when the Blue Books only gave him the blues. He usually abstained from

the discussion of merely painful subjects. But just indignation often

forced him to make exceptions. Thirty years after the passage of the

first, and nine after the passage of the second Chimney Sweepers

Regulation Act, a very bad case of evasion occurred in the North of

England:--

We take this paragraph from the _Pall Mall Gazette_:--

"Chimney-sweeps, who continue, in defiance of the law, to employ

'climbing boys' may take warning from a case which has been tried

at Durham. A Gateshead chimney-sweeper was sentenced to six months'

imprisonment for the manslaughter of an unhappy little lad who was

suffocated in attempting to carry out his orders in clearing a

flue."

Apart from the individual ruffianism in this case, _Mr. Punch_ asks

whether the Act which was intended to deliver little children from

the most hideous cruelties is becoming a dead letter in any part of

the kingdom. Is there any other place than Gateshead where

little lads are rammed into foul flues to be suffocated? The

present generation may not remember the struggle that had to be

fought out, over and over, before the children could be protected.

It had to be waged against habit, prejudice, greed, ridicule; but

the victory was won. James Montgomery,[1] the poet, with one

ghastly but damaging volume, The _Chimney Sweep's Magazine and

Climbing Boy's Album_, gave thousands a nightmare that lasted for

years, but he carried the Act. There was a poem in the book, too,

by Blake, the painter, that did yeoman's service. We got the Act,

and believed that the system of atrocious cruelty was at an end.

But the above paragraph wakes painful doubts.

We should call the sentence on the fellow who killed the child

ridiculously mild, could anything ridiculous connect itself with

such a theme. We wish that this master chimney-sweeper of Gateshead

could have been sentenced to two years' imprisonment, varied by

twenty sound lashes with the cat every quarter day, except the last,

when he should have had fifty, as a parting testimonial of the

public sense of his character.

[Footnote 1: No mention is made in the otherwise full and sympathetic

notice of James Montgomery in the D.N.B. of this, not the least

honourable of the services of that Sheffield worthy. Though his verse,

especially in the epic vein, was unequal, the D.N.B., differing from

Lord Jeffrey who slated it in the _Edinburgh_, agrees with _Punch_ in

according James Montgomery the title of poet, reserving that of

"Poetaster" to Robert or "Satan" Montgomery, who also dealt in epics,

and was the victim of Macaulay's famous and ferocious castigation in the

_Quarterly_.]

[Sidenote: _A Child Heroine_]

This was written in the issue of March 15, 1873. Just a year later, at

the close of the Ashanti campaign, an appeal was made, and not in vain,

to _Punch_ to recognize the heroism of another working child:--

A TEN-YEAR-OLD MARTYR

"DEAR MR. PUNCH,

"There will be a great deal of war-paint going round soon, in the

shape of titles, honours, and decorations, official rewards for

'killing, slaying and burning.' Will you give a decoration to the

little motherless girl of ten, Louisa Row,[2] who 'undertook the

cooking' for her father, 'a labourer,' and his family, and died in

the execution of her duty?

"She has not killed anyone, black or white, except herself; she has

not burned anyone's huts, or anyone's villages--she has only burned

herself. She will get no glory, unless you, with a stroke of your

pen, will put one little star of honour upon her unknown grave.

"THE AUTHOR OF _Olive Varcoe_."

[Footnote 2: "A painful death by burning has happened at Torquay. Louisa

Row, aged ten, lost her mother a few weeks ago, and undertook the

cooking for her father, a labourer, and the rest of the family. She had

well performed the duties devolving upon her since her mother's death,

until one day she went too near the grate, her frock was ignited, and

she was terribly burned. The poor child lived several days after the

accident. At the inquest a verdict of 'Accidental death' was

returned."]

Will our correspondent accept this inscription for her poor little

martyr's tombstone?

Duty's small Servant, without prize or praise,

How soon on thy hard life hath death come down!

Take this brief record of thy childish days--

Gold, tried with fire, makes the best Martyr's Crown.

_Punch's_ record as the champion of the working children leaves little

room for criticism. And we have seen in several of the extracts given

above that his severest censures are directed against the employers of

labour, the greed of gain, the worship of Mammon. But if he cannot be

convicted of partiality to capital, he was not always fair to labour.

Even in his most democratic days he showed a distrust of "delegates."

The working man's grievances were admitted, but his salaried spokesmen,

when they were drawn from his own order, were condemned, with very few

exceptions, as untrustworthy mischief-makers. How acute this distrust

had now become may be gathered from the acrimonious article which

appears in 1861 under the heading "A Dig at the Delegates":--

A Delegate is generally a lazy, idle lout, who likes to sit and

talk much better than to work; and who, considering himself as

being "gifted with the gab," tries to foster small dissensions and

causes of dispute, that he may have the pleasure of hearing himself

prate about them. In other words, he is a drone that goes buzzing

about the beer-shops, and living upon the honey that the working

bees have toiled for. His business is to set a man against his

master, and to keep afloat the Unions that tend to nurture Strikes,

by giving men a false idea of their own strength, and underrating

the resources and resistance of employers. Having duped the

shallow-pated to elect him as their mouthpiece and being paid by

them to lead a lazy life in looking to what he is pleased to call

their interests, the Delegate grows fat on their starvation and

their Strikes, and what is death to them becomes to him the means

of life. Fancied grievances and most unreasonable demands the

Delegate endeavours to encourage and support, for squabbling brings

him into notice and his tongue into full play, and raises his

importance in the pothouse-haunting world. A claim for ten hours'

pay for only nine hours' work is just the sort of trade demand that

a Delegate delights in; for he knows that its injustice must

prevent its being listened to, and he will have the chance of

swigging nightly, gratis, pots of beer while denouncing the

iniquity of rapacious masters, in all the frothy eloquence of a

public-house harangue.

As nobody but a fool would submit to have his earnings eaten into by

a sloth, it is the business of the Delegate to clap a stop on

cleverness, and keep the brains of working men down to the

muddle-pated level of those who are his tools. He, of course, fears

the quick sight of any workman of intelligence, lest it may see

through his iniquitous designs. He, therefore, gets the best hands

marked on the Black List, and does the utmost in his power to reduce

the active, skilful and industrious working man to the standard of

the stupid, slothful, sluggish sot.

[Illustration: MRS. NORTH AND HER ATTORNEY

MRS. NORTH: "You see, Mr. Lincoln, we have failed utterly in our course

of action; I want peace, and so, if you cannot effect an amicable

arrangement, I must put the case into other hands."]

There have always been people who trade on discontent, and would find

their occupation gone were it removed. But to represent such motives as

animating the majority of Trade Union delegates was a gross

exaggeration; and it was both unfair and unjust to draw so hard and fast

a distinction between the rank and file of the working classes and those

whom they chose to represent them. The weakness of _Punch's_ position

was severely tested during the war of North and South in America and the

Lancashire cotton famine, of which that war was the cause. Just as

_Punch_ failed to recognize the existence of idealism in the leaders of

the North, and consistently maligned and misrepresented Lincoln until

his death, so he failed to render justice to the idealism of the cotton

operatives, who espoused a cause which was not only unpopular and

unfashionable, but the promotion of which entailed the maintenance of

that blockade which caused widespread distress and misery in Lancashire.

_Punch's_ attitude towards America in the earlier stages of the conflict

showed a complete inability to comprehend the great issues involved, and

an impartial dislike of both sides tempered by a sentimental leaning

towards the South. It must be remembered that at this time the cause of

the South was favoured by nearly all classes, that it appealed to Mr.

Gladstone; that the Duke of Argyll and John Bright were almost the only

statesmen who backed the North; and that amongst London newspapers of

any weight the _Spectator_ stood almost alone on that side. _Punch's_

reading of the war at the close of 1861 is shown in the cartoon which

represents King Cotton as Prometheus, bound with the chains of Blockade,

and with the American Eagle preying on his vitals. The verses which

accompany the picture emphasize the suicidal folly of the eagle, but the

question of slavery or the Union is not even mentioned. A fortnight

later the point of the "other [Cotton] Kings" is explained by another

cartoon in which John Bull, addressing the combatants, says, "If you

like fighting better than business, I shall deal at the other shop."

Here the verses drive home the _argumentum ad pocketum_ in the crudest

way. Cousin Jonathan is told not to be an ass, or "bid Mrs. Britannia

stop ruling the wave":--

We'll break your blockade, Cousin Jonathan, yet,

Yes, darn our old stockings, C. J., but we will.

And the cotton we'll have, and to work we will set

Every Lancashire hand, every Manchester mill.

We're recruiting to do it--we'll make no mistakes:

There's a place they call India just over the way;

There we're raising a force which, Jerusalem, snakes!

Will clean catawampus your cruisers, C. J.

[Sidenote: "_Distressed Millionaires_"]

Events entirely failed to justify these truculent words. A year later

the cotton famine was at its height, and an appeal for funds is headed

"Welly Clamming," with the explanation, "Everywhere we hear this, the

Lancashire Doric for 'nearly starving.'" _Punch_ applauds the zeal of

the Quakers in relieving the distress caused by famine, fever and frost,

and simultaneously reproduces this extraordinary advertisement from the

_Manchester Guardian_:--

_Travel_: A gentleman, whose son, aged 17, is thrown out of

occupation by the Cotton Famine, would be glad to meet with one or

two other young gentlemen to accompany his son on a Tour, for five

or six months, in the Mediterranean or elsewhere.

Address F. 127 at the Printers.

The advertiser, according to _Punch_, appears to be "one of those

distressed millionaires who, because their mills have ceased working,

declare themselves destitute mill-owners, and devolve on the squires and

farmers and the British public the duty of rescuing their unemployed

workpeople from starvation."

[Illustration: "A STILL BIGGER CLAIMANT"]

When a ship was sent to Liverpool bearing the contributions of the

United States to the relief of Lancashire in February, 1863, _Punch_

welcomed the gift without reserve, as linking the two worlds anew by the

chain of fraternal goodwill. But a very different spirit is shown in his

acid comments on the debate in the House of Commons initiated by W. E.

Forster, who attacked the Government for not interfering to prevent

ships of war being supplied by our builders to the Confederates, and

said that we incurred great danger of war. The facts and the sequel

fully justified Forster's protest, but _Punch_ was not content with

backing up Palmerston's defence of the Government, and treated with

contempt and ridicule Bright's insistence on the sympathy of the working

classes with the North:--

Here it may be mentioned that Mr. Bright[3] alluded in his speech

to a meeting held the day before at the St. James's Hall, where he

had been in the chair, and a crowded assembly of workmen testified

the utmost sympathy with the North. This meeting is grandiloquently

described by the Yankee organ here, but shall describe itself for

_Mr. Punch's_ readers. It was chiefly composed of Trade Union men,

and when a person who had chosen to be free and act for himself

ventured to speak, although on the same side as the other orators,

these lovers of liberty interrupted him with cries of "He's not a

Society man!" Mr. Bright made a fervid and eloquent speech in

favour of the North, and a shoemaker came next, who abused _Mr.

Punch_, said "that a monster in human shape had been guest of the

Lord Mayor," and that "the Devil, in the shape of _The Times_

newspaper, was carrying out an infernal purpose." A joiner then

called Lord Palmerston a liar, and a Professor Beestley, or some

such name, attacked the "wicked press," meaning the respectable

journals. An address to Mr. Lincoln was agreed to, assailing the

"infamous _Times_," the "arrogant aristocracy," the "diabolical"

South, our "unscrupulous moneyocracy," and the "infamous

rebellion," and terminating with some gushing bosh about the

vivifying Sun of Liberty. This document is penned in _New York

Herald_ style, and probably owes its origin to Yankee inspiration.

To this kind of meeting, and this kind of language, Mr. Bright

referred, complacently, in the House of Commons. The North must be

in a bad way when such allies are coveted.

[Footnote 3: The variations of view in _Punch's_ estimate of John Bright

form an interesting study. In the main, while admiring his courage,

_Punch_ found him too fond of asserting an impracticable independence.

The masses distrusted him as a cottonocrat; the middle-classes as an

out-and-out democrat and therefore an advocate of mob-rule. Punch

himself had described _Bright_ as an inciter to class-hatred in 1860.]

[Sidenote: _Libelling Lincoln_]

The South was in a much worse way when a "respectable journal" was

reduced to explaining away the undoubted and disinterested support of

the North by Lancashire cotton spinners and other British working men as

Trade Union tyranny, to say nothing of that worst infirmity of political

controversy--the vulgar perversion of an opponent's name. _Punch_ was on

stronger ground in criticizing the spread-eagling of the northern Press,

as when the _New York Herald_ declared that:--

They (the American people) know that when this rebellion began the

aristocrats of England took advantage of the chance to destroy us,

and joined heart and hand with the slaveholding rebels. They know

that this rebellion was born in Exeter Hall, nurtured by the

English aristocracy, armed from English arsenals, and supported by

English sympathy and assistance.

_Punch_, though no lover of Exeter Hall, could not refrain from

ironically vindicating its innocence, and makes for the rest some good

debating points against the _Herald_. But there is little "neutrality"

in his statement that Southern loyalty was as staunch as that of the

North, "though not so truculent or atrocious"; and when he falls foul of

the Yankees--a word invariably used in a disparaging sense--for calling

the confederates "rebels," he did not know that the magnanimous Lincoln

would never allow them to be called by that name in his presence. He is

made to do so, however, in _Punch's_ parody of one of Lincoln's

speeches--a truly lamentable performance, in which the President claims

dictatorial powers, calls for whipcord to whip the rebels, abuses the

"rotten old world," talks with the utmost cynicism of the blacks, and in

general behaves like a vulgar buffoon. The true Lincoln is to be found

in the immortal Second Inaugural delivered on March 4, 1865.

As for the British working men, though _Punch_ had undoubtedly

endeavoured to discount the strength of the tide of feeling which

continued to run strongly against the slave power, in spite of the

terrible suffering brought about by the blockade, he quoted with

approval Lord Palmerston's formidable and damaging indictment of the

manufacturers in the House of Commons on July 30:--

"We know," he said, "that in the county most fortunes have been

made by the manufacturers. I do not agree with the Hon.

Member for Stockport that it has all been invested in the mills. On

the contrary they have accumulated much more than their mills could

have cost. There are enormous capitalists in the county, some of

whom, I am sorry to say, though they have starving populations at

their gates, and anticipate worse distress as coming, have

actually, for the sake of profit, sold and sent out of the country

the cotton which they ought to have used for the employment of the

people. I say, why are these people to be exempt, and not to be

made to contribute to the distress which they see around them?"

This speech, _Punch_ observes, enraged Cobden, who was furious with

Palmerston for his unjust, reckless and incorrect charge; but his reply

was inconclusive, as he could only say that a large proportion of

Lancashire mill-owners had _not_ sold their stocks of unsold cotton to

foreigners for the sake of the high prices which the fibre commanded.

Cobden returned to the charge a couple of days later in a speech which

is a most extraordinary prospective plagiarism of the election address

of any anti-waste Independent Liberal candidate in the year 1921, as may

be judged from _Punch's_ summary:--

The present is the most extravagant government that ever existed in

peace time.

This is all Lord Palmerston's fault.

He is always interfering and getting up sensations.

If the Liberals do not disentangle themselves from this system they

will "rot out of existence."

The Tories keep Lord Palmerston in Office and have more confidence

in him than in their own chief.

He is puffed by a clever and noisy _claque_.

All the questions dear to Radicals and Dissenters have gone back

under his leadership.

This sort of thing must not go on next year.

[Sidenote: _Our Noble Selves_]

The honours of the debate, which did not enhance Cobden's reputation,

rested with Palmerston, but apart from his extreme frankness in dealing

with the Lancashire mill-owners, he owed his triumph to his unrivalled

Parliamentary opportunism. The Governments of neutral states cannot play

heroic _rôles_ in a great war. More scope is left to opposition leaders.

Lord Derby distinguished himself by his liberality and energy in

organizing relief measures, but the Lancashire working man was the most

heroic figure in English public life from 1861 to 1865, though _Punch_

had only a glimmering of the truth. The note of complacent satisfaction

over the tranquillity and prosperity of England as compared with the

disturbed state of Europe is frequently sounded, and the Exhibition of

1862 is taken as the occasion to blow the national trumpet in "Our Noble

Selves":--

All the world we invite to behold a grand sight

Of not only goods, chattels, and treasures,

But of law that's obeyed because mended or made

By men who bring forward good measures.

Let them come then, and see what a people are we,

Steady-going, not headlong and skittish.

What a world this of ours would be, O foreign Powers,

If all nations behaved like the British!

* * * * *

This is Liberty Hall; no restriction at all

On the freedom of speaking and writing;

The result is that, say any fool what he may,

Foolish language occasions no fighting.

'Tis the easiest job to disperse any mob,

Without being so much as pumped on

By a fire-engine hose, off the multitude goes,

Mind, Order reigns bloodless at Brompton.

This mood is, however, tempered by moments of self-criticism. The social

millennium had not arrived when in 1862 a statue was erected in Bolton

to its benefactor Crompton, the inventor of the spinning-mule, while his

descendants were living in destitution:--

The spinning mule made Bolton. Samuel Crompton made the spinning

mule.... He died in 1827, at the age of 74, and now Bolton, whose

master-manufacturers cheated him living, honours him dead with a

statue.... But Samuel Crompton left more behind him than the great

invention and the memory of his wrongs and struggles. He begat sons

and daughters as well as invented mules. He died a pauper, and they

have fared as the children of those who die paupers are apt to

do.... One of his sons is living dependent on charity, as his

father died. Somebody bought him a suit of clothes that he might

make a decent appearance at the inauguration of his father's

statue. Besides this son, there are living some half a dozen

grandchildren, some dozen great-grandchildren, of the

inventor--all, with one exception, in poverty of the meanest, most

pinching kind. Not one of them, son, grandchildren, or

great-grandchildren, was invited to the inauguration of Samuel

Crompton's statue.

[Illustration: IN FORMA PAUPERIS

LONDON ARAB: "Please, sir, can't I have a shill'n's 'orth?]

A sum of £2,000 had been collected for the statue: a few weeks after its

inauguration Lord Palmerston sent £50 to the surviving son. Assuredly

there have been few more remarkable examples of asking for bread and

being given a stone. And mill-owners were not the only masters whose

methods exposed them to criticism. When in 1863 the engine-driver and

fireman of a luggage train were fined 15s. each at the Oxford City Court

for being found drunk and incapable on their engine, _Punch_ admits the

moderation of the punishment, but asks his readers to ponder the story

told by the delinquents, and put the saddle on the right horse:--

They declared in the presence of the Company's Officers and without

contradiction, that their day was fourteen hours, and that owing to

extra pressure, they had only had seventeen hours sleep the whole

of last week.... On whom should fall the blame and punishment? On

the men, outworn, and driven to stimulants as a substitute for

sleep or a support under exhaustion, or on the managers of the

Company, who thus overwork, or, in other words, underpay their

servants?

[Illustration: MUDDLEBY JUNCTION

OVERWORKED POINTSMAN (puzzled): "Let's see! There's the 'scursion' were

due at 4.45, and it ain't in; then, afore that were the 'mineral'--no!

that must ha' been the 'goods,' or the 'cattle.' No! that were

after--cattle's shunting now. Let's see. Fast train came through

at--con-found!--and here comes 'the express' afore its time, and blest

if I know which line she's on!]

The cartoon published nine years later, in 1872, showed that _Punch_ was

still dissatisfied with the conditions of railway servants. _A propos_

of the railways, it is worth recording that in 1860 there were cheap

excursions to Brighton and back for 3s. Also that in 1868 _Punch_

commits himself to the view that an increase in railway fares means less

revenue--an interesting parallel to the recent controversy.

In 1865 the cattle plague led to a sharp rise in the price of meat; but

the attempt to introduce and popularize cheap jerked (or charqued) beef

from South America--sold at threepence a pound--was not successful,

though _Punch_ appealed to the public to give it a fair chance in a set

of verses with the refrain:--

Oh, the jerked beef of La Plata,

A platter give me of jerked beef.

"Progress at high prices," in _Punch's_ opinion, was dearly bought. When

two demonstrations were held by working men at Worcester this summer to

protest against the high price of meat which was attributed to a

monopoly amongst the farmers and butchers, and a resolution was adopted

to abstain from the consumption of meat for a certain time, _Punch_ saw

in this move a tacit acknowledgment that the high price was owing to

demand, and cordially endorsed the comments of _The Times_:--

There can be no doubt that the present high price of meat is mainly

to be traced to the fact that the consumption on the part of the

working classes has of late years enormously increased, owing to

their prosperous condition, good wages, and cheap bread. A general

resolution on their part to limit the consumption would soon bring

down the price.

[Sidenote: _Honest Fault-finding_]

The strike against the butchers was one in which the working classes

might safely combine to turn out. "They will not injure themselves, nor

hurt their wives and families: on the contrary, all the while the strike

lasts they will be putting by money. The public will support instead of

discouraging them." But it is impossible to take the commendation

seriously in view of the last sentence; "whilst others, I trust, are

endeavouring, by total abstinence from butchers' meat, to reduce the

butchers to reason, I remain medicinally, of course, always 'A

Beefeater.'" Much more effective, because untainted by irony, are the

plain-spoken verses on the British workman as painted by his flatterers,

his detractors and his candid friends:--

While Democrat orators praise him and puff him

As the land's bone and sinew, and Nature's own nob:

Aristocrat talkers calumniously cuff him,

As shiftless, and soulless, sot, spendthrift, and snob.

'Twixt the daub of his bully, the daub of his backer,

The true British Workman's been able to stand,

And at once to disclaim both the brighter and blacker,

As alike wide of truth, from the right and left hand.

The success of "Tom Brown" (Tom Hughes), who was elected for Lambeth in

1865, encouraged the enthusiastic friends of the British workman in the

hope that he would now be painted without fear or favour, but Tom

Brown's honest unvarnished portraiture was more than his sitter could

stand:--

While a fact is a fact 'twill do no good to blink it,

Put up with the shadows Tom Brown dares to show,

Your face may be darker than you like to think it,

If the shadows ain't fast, wash, and let's see them go.

While your Union pickets still waylay and "ratten"

The knob-sticks, who work on their own honest hook,

While on your hard earnings strike-delegates batten,

And machines and machine-work are in your black book;

While men who earn more by the week than their curate

Are content in one room of a hovel to pig;

While shop-drinks and Saint Monday their old rate endure at,

And the wife and the young 'uns come after the swig;

While limb's rest and soul's light to your infants begrudging,

You drive them to workshop, to mine, loom or wheel,

To drag through long years of unnatural drudging

As though minds could die out, and yet bodies not feel;

While such are the shadows your features that darken,

Needs must that the blacks in your picture appear;

And they're no friends who bid you your own praises hearken,

When an honest fault-finder is craving your ear!

Later on, however, Tom Brown was himself taken to task for flattering

the working man.

On the question of housing and sanitation _Punch_ refused to believe

that landlords were altogether to blame. Social reformers and

legislators found themselves up against stubborn facts, and none were

more stubborn than the Briton's prejudices in favour of vested rights

and a man's house being his own castle, wherein he is free to do what he

likes with his own:--

These stubborn facts are, no doubt, at the bottom of much that is

worthy of respect in John Bull's character. They have not a little

to do with his Magna Charta and his Habeas Corpus. But they

occasionally stop the way all the same; obstruct the efforts of the

Local Board or Nuisance Removal Committee, crouch like lions in the

path of the Officer of Health, trip up the heels of the Inspector

of Nuisances, and crop out in back slums, by-lanes, and blind

alleys for district visitors and zealous clergymen to break their

shins over.

[Sidenote: _Village Sanitation in 1865_]

These remarks form the preface to a series of extracts from the verbatim

report of a Visiting Committee appointed in 1865 to inspect a little

seaside village. The name of the place is withheld, but _Punch_ pledges

his word for the absolute veracity of the reporter, adding that what the

Committee found in the way of stinks, putrid wells, foul accumulations,

and purblind or pig-headed people was to be found in nineteen out of

every twenty English villages, seaside or inland, rural or suburban. The

houses in a sample street were occupied by an old gardener, a small pork

butcher, three pilots, three sailors' wives, and two coast-guardsmen.

The description of the well in the pork butcher's house is enough, in

Dickens's phrase, to sicken a scavenger. But the complacent fatalism

which marked all these householders rises to a pitch of sublimity in the

immortal phrase of the first coast-guardsman:-

"Had the cholera in '44: ain't afeared of it. _Considers as it's a

natural went for the overplush of mankind._ When his time comes,

knows as he 'as got to go. Considers as his time wasn't come in

'44. Always keeps his house very clean: does all the scrubbing

himself, and paints his bedsteads and chests of drawers with red

lead and turps twice a year."

According to the local doctor, all the inhabitants of these houses were

drinking water strongly impregnated with lead, but "they appear to like

it so I can't help it, especially as the landlord refuses to alter the

pumps." The first pilot considered that he had a right to drink his own

sewage if he liked it. The second coast-guardsman "couldn't abear

chloride of lime," and, in general, disinfectants were dreaded more than

bad drains. An optimistic speaker on Social Science in October, 1859,

had declared that the advance of education was certainly very marked.

"Classes once illiterate now show a love of literature, the taste for

which has even reached our cabmen, who in demeanour and civility are not

the men they were." _Punch_ was sceptical about the cabman and printed

an ironical poem on his progress modelled on "She wore a wreath of

roses." The passages we have quoted show that six years later pork

butchers, pilots and coast-guardsmen left a good deal to be desired in

their knowledge of practical hygiene. But _Punch_ does not acquit the

landlords or Government officials, and, though no lover of despotism

abroad or at home, there were moments when he felt that a little more

"paternal government" would not be a bad thing. As he put it a little

later: "when _Mr. Punch_ is reminded of tanks, cisterns, bins and butts

for miles along a tainted shore being overlooked by a mythical Inspector

of Nuisances instead of being looked into, in his utter bewilderment he

is tempted to exclaim, Wanted a Bismarck."

* * * * *

With the death of Palmerston the question of organic reform re-emerged,

but the Russell administration, hampered by the disaffected Adullamite

Liberals--brilliantly led by Lowe--and restrained by Whig caution,

handled their Bill in a half-hearted spirit which courted defeat.

Russell resigned at the end of June, 1866, and was succeeded by Lord

Derby with Disraeli again as Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is on

record that Gladstone, shortly after Palmerston's death, agreed with

Denison, the Speaker, that there was no strong feeling for reform in the

country. Yet within a few months the diagnosis was completely falsified.

Immediately after the fall of the Russell administration came the

historic Hyde Park riots and a vigorous agitation throughout the

country. "The artisans, who had seemed apathetic towards the franchise

when it was dangled before them, became angry when it was refused."

_Punch's_ account of the rioting and its sequel is liberal of censure,

but cannot be regarded as either impartial or judicial or as

appreciative of the significance of the episode:--

_Monday, July 23._--It did not seem to suit the Fates that our

friends the Conservatives should slide into the recess quite so

quietly as had been anticipated. Sir George Grey, the late Home

Secretary, had ordained that the proposed Reform Demonstration

should not be allowed to take place in Hyde Park, but his Ministry

went out in time to save him any further trouble in the matter. Mr.

Walpole had to vindicate the law, and his gentle soul has been a

good deal perturbed by events. One Beales insisted on holding the

meeting, and Sir Richard Mayne locked the Park Gates. The result

was inevitable. The artisan class attended in large numbers, and of

course behaved perfectly well; but, equally of course, the

processions were supplemented by a vast mass of Roughs, who behaved

perfectly ill. _Mr. Punch_ is unable to compliment the Reform

League, inasmuch as its acts tended to violate order, and its

"experiment of right" could have been tried with a hundred men

instead of with thousands. Nor can we compliment the authorities

who endeavoured to defend an untenable post, inasmuch as law could

have been asserted by the arrest of a few individuals. He does not

make a great noise about the breaking down of some railings, and

the destruction by some roughs of trees and shrubs, nor would he

put London in a state of siege because a good many windows have

been broken, but all this sort of thing is really the fault of one

Beales, who knew that a mob would follow the working man. Rough and

Bludgeon came largely into contact, to the discomfort of the

former, and the Beaks looked to the rest, Mr. Knox having

especially distinguished himself by firmness and moderation, coming

down sternly on ruffians and being lenient to mere fools.

But Mr. Walpole had to defend himself in the House, and also had to

see a Reform deputation, before whom he wept, and some of whom

managed to misunderstand him, or pretended to do so, whereby there

was another meeting summoned, as if with Government sanction, but

after explanations, in and out of the House, the idea was given up.

So ended the campaign, and _Mr. Punch_ is almost ashamed of the

fuss which has been made over an affair of broken heads, while two

great nations are mourning over slaughtered myriads.

[Illustration: NO ROUGH-IANISM

WORKING MAN: "Look here, you vagabond! Right or wrong, we won't have

your help."]

[Sidenote: "_One Beales_"]

"One Beales," as _Punch_ contemptuously describes him, was a political

agitator, but of a very different type from the "delegate" as depicted

in a previous page. He was an Etonian, a scholar of his college at

Cambridge, a barrister of the Middle Temple, and a revising barrister

for Middlesex, who died in the odour of legal sanctity as a County Court

Judge. But as a member of the Emancipation Society in the Civil War, a

member of Mill's Jamaica Committee in connexion with the case of General

Eyre, and above all as President of the Reform League, and advocate of

Manhood Suffrage and the right of public meeting, he had incurred

_Punch's_ unremitting hostility. "Beales and his Bubbly-jocks" were

constantly held up to ridicule. But they were very far from being

ridiculous. The League served as a spear-head for the discontent aroused

by the failure of Russell's Reform Bill, which it had cordially

supported. The meeting in Trafalgar Square on July 2, 1866, had been

prohibited, but Sir Richard Mayne, the first Commissioner of Police,

withdrew the prohibition, and the meeting, attended by nearly 70,000

persons, passed off quietly. Beales is declared to have shown great

courage and coolness on July 23. The meeting assembled near the gates of

Hyde Park; the invasion of the Park and the pulling down of the railings

occurred as the crowd were returning to Trafalgar Square, but the

leaders were in no way responsible. The police were roughly handled and

had to be reinforced by the Guards before the crowd was driven out; but

an amicable arrangement was reached between Beales and Walpole next day

as to the discontinuance of any further meetings except by arrangement

with the government. The Reform League had done its work; its mission

was virtually ended when Disraeli's Reform Bill passed in 1867 and it

was formally dissolved in March, 1869, three days after Beales had

resigned the presidency. No amount of belittling of Beales can disguise

the fact that he and his League gave a great impetus to the Reform

movement--the Lord Mayor of London actually presided over one of its

meetings in the sacred precincts of the Guildhall--and forced on the

introduction of the Bill of 1867. During its progress through Parliament

another great meeting convened by the Reform League was held in Hyde

Park in May, 1867. The Home Secretary issued a notice warning all

persons against attending it, but was practically over-ruled by the

Prime Minister, who announced that nothing would be done to hinder it.

The meeting, attended by 200,000 people, passed off without any

disturbance or untoward incident, and Walpole soon afterwards retired.

As Walpole, in consequence of his Hyde Park associations, had become one

of _Punch's_ regular butts, it is only fair to his memory to say that

the story of his having broken down and wept before a deputation is

denied by the D.N.B. _Punch's_ review of the episode quoted above is

thoroughly typical of his temper in this period of transition; of his

independence, his readiness to acknowledge the moderation and sanity of

British working men, his anxiety to distinguish between them and the

hooligan fringe; and at the same time of his distrust of their leaders

and of any organization which in his view savoured of extremism. There

were "bubbly-jocks" in Beales's following, but he was no bubbly-jock, as

Wilkes was no Wilkesite, and in many ways though by different means was

working towards the same end as _Punch_ himself. Beales had no gifts as

a mob-orator. His real strength lay in his knowledge of the law; and it

was on the legal ground that he worsted Lord Derby and Walpole. There

are some who think that modern democracy was born on July 23, 1866. Be

that as it may, the Hyde Park riot was a great landmark in our political

history.

[Sidenote: _The Future of Coal_]

It is pleasant to turn from _Punch's_ not very happy handling of the

Hyde Park incident to his wiser, if fanciful comment on the warnings of

the philosophical alarmists who predicted the speedy exhaustion of our

coal supplies, and asked What, then, would Posterity do for force and

for fuel? _Punch_ suggests another conceivable fear to balance that of

the coal pessimists. If our population continued to increase at the same

rate, not only would the bowels of the land be consumed, but its entire

face be covered up with towns and factories. For his part he feared

neither the one nor the other event:--

If the coal ever runs out, something equivalent to it will

doubtless turn up, or else turn down. Somebody will discover a

cheap way to set the Thames on fire, or to draw below, and store,

atmospheric electricity. By a system of vertical elevation instead

of lateral extension, our architecture will be adapted to our area,

and our cities, no longer expanding, will continue to ascend. The

higher they rise the less will Posterity be troubled with any

amount of smoke which it may be unable to consume. The future of

England will then be as fresh as a daisy, still as familiar a

flower as ever.

The growth of industrialism was not to be dreaded if it was humanely and

wisely controlled and directed. That is the moral which _Punch_ draws

from the opening of the new docks at Barrow-in-Furness in September,

1867. The occasion was indeed "worth a crowd and a crow":--

A Barrow that has grown, one may say, from a barrow into a

coach-and-four in ten years! A Barrow that has swelled almost

within the memory of the youngest inhabitant from the quiet

coast-nest of some five score fishermen into the busy, bustling,

blazing, money-making, money-spending, roaring, tearing, swearing,

steaming, sweltering seat of twenty thousand iron workers, and the

crime and culture, the dirt and disease, the hard-working and

hard-drinking, the death and life, the money and misery they bring

along with them!! A Barrow out of which they are tipping 600,000

tons of iron every year!!! A Barrow big enough to hold a

Monster-Iron-Mining-and-Smelting Company, with two Dukes among its

directors, to say nothing of Lord knows who, in the way of Lords,

and Lord knows how many millionaires!!!!

The two Dukes--one of them, Devonshire, a Second Wrangler into the

bargain--were both present, and also the first of living orators, Mr.

Gladstone. But the person who interested _Mr. Punch_ most was the

master-spirit of the great iron company, "one Schneider," and he is not

slow to improve the occasion:--

He has hitherto been known to fame among public men chiefly as an

ex-M.P., turned out of his seat at Lancaster for gross and

shameless bribery. He has seen so much done by energy and money

that he probably thought the one as legitimate a lever into

Parliament as the other. But he has been punished for his mistake.

He has now an opportunity to repair it. His name is the same as

that of the President of the French Legislative Assembly, the

energetic, far-sighted M. Schneider, whom _Mr. Punch_ has already

honoured as the head and heart of the admirably-conducted firm

which has made the iron manufacturing district of Le Creusot, a

model as yet to be imitated among the great English industries of

the same kind....

And now for _Mr. Punch's_ proposition. Suppose M. Schneider were to

set himself in real earnest to wipe out the recollection of

Lancaster by the redemption of Barrow? What if he were to prove

himself the ditto of M. Schneider of Le Creusot, not in name only

but in deed, and to make Barrow-in-Furness the Creusot of England,

in morals, manners, civilization, education, domestic comfort and

culture, as well as in industry, energy and money-making? Here is a

work worthy of the noblest ambition, the most determined energy,

the highest intelligence, and certain of the richest reward--a

reward not to be gauged by dividends, it is true, but beyond the

measure of millions. Let there be two Schneiders known in the world

for their noble conception and perfect discharge of the duties of a

great captain of industry, and let one of them be an Englishman.

[Sidenote: _Reform Bill of 1867_]

Henry William Schneider, who started the Barrow Steel Works and was for

many years one of the directors, died in 1887. His namesakes of Le

Creusot still continue their dynasty. Early in 1870, the year of the

Franco-Prussian war, _Punch_ again repeats his comparison of Le Creusot

with the greatest and best managed English iron-works to the advantage

of the former, on the basis of statistics which had not been

contradicted by M. Rochefort or any other of M. Schneider's bitterest

enemies.

Divergent contemporary opinions on the Reform Bill of 1867 found vent in

a number of famous phrases. Disraeli, who had guided its passage through

the House, claimed to have "educated his Party"; while Lord Cranborne

(afterwards Lord Salisbury) described the measure as "a political

betrayal which has no parallel in our annals." Lord Derby's

contributions to political phrase-making were threefold. The Bill was a

"great experiment," a "leap in the dark" (commemorated in one of

_Punch's_ most-famous cartoons), and he had "dished the Whigs." Lowe's

advice that we must now set to work "to educate our future masters" was

the weightiest of all. In view of the compromises and manoeuvring by

which the passage of the Bill was secured, there is good warrant for the

verdict of later historians:--

Even in English politics few great changes have come about with

less evidence of principle or conviction on the part of those

mainly concerned in it, with more appearance of mere opportunism

and concession to the expediencies of the moment. It was difficult

to be enthusiastic over a Reform Bill framed by a ministerial party

which did not want reform, under pressure from an opposition which

did not want the Bill.[4]

[Footnote 4: _The Political History of England_, Vol. xii., by Sidney

Low and Lloyd Sanders, p. 207.]

[Sidenote: _Working Men Candidates_]

_Punch_, whose attitude towards Disraeli on his return to power had

turned from satirical distrust to reluctant admiration of his commanding

ability, welcomed Reform, but his welcome was accompanied by grave

misgivings as to the growing strength of the Trade Union movement, and

throughout 1867 cartoons and comments in prose and verse abound in

condemnation of the intimidation practised at Sheffield by trade union

agents. The report of the Royal Commission appointed in January, 1867,

proved the existence of terrorism, but exculpated forty-eight out of the

sixty trade unions in Sheffield from complicity in outrage, and showed

that it had been denounced by the principal trade union leaders.

Picketing, even when "peaceful," had been pronounced illegal, and trade

unions had no protection against embezzlement by their own officials on

the ground that their rules were in restraint of trade. On the other

hand Lord Elcho's Master and Servant Act had placed the workman on a

level with his employer in regard to breaches of contract, and rendered

the remedy mutual. It cannot be said that the successes of the trade

unions in the legislative field were greeted with enthusiasm by _Punch_.

Nor did he show much sympathy with the efforts to secure direct

representation of Labour in Parliament. Mr. George Odger is

congratulated on retiring from the contest at Chelsea at the end of

1868, in compliance with the decision of the arbitrators to whom he and

his Committee referred the question whether it was better for the

Liberal cause in Chelsea that he or Sir H. Hoare should quit the field.

The arbitrators were Mr. James Stansfeld, Tom Hughes, and Mr. Peter

Taylor. But when the chairman of Mr. Odger's Committee declared that "it

was the old story over again, that working men acted with undue faith in

those they considered they might trust," _Punch_ felt called upon to

address "a serious word to working men." The arbitrators were all men of

the most advanced Liberal principles, the highest character, and the

strongest fellow feeling with working men. Their impartiality was above

suspicion. So _Punch_ proceeds in his most magisterial vein:--

The fault of working men has been, not the putting "undue faith" in

friends of this kind, but the not putting faith enough in them; and

the tone in which the Chairman of Mr. Odger's Committee,

and--_Punch_ is sorry to see--Mr. Odger himself, comment on the

decision of Messrs. Stansfeld, Hughes and Taylor, confessing at the

same time that they are not informed of the grounds of it, is a

striking illustration of this fault. There is nothing so hard in

the practical education of working men as the teaching them to

prefer disagreeable truth to flattering falsehood, and not to turn

from the friends who have the pluck to tell them such truth to the

schemers who mislead them by such falsehood. It is this difficulty

which has wrecked more working men's movements, co-operative,

educational, self-helping, than any other--the difficulty of

getting working men to know their true friends from their sham

ones, and to trust the former, even when their vanity is fretted,

or their wish or whim of the moment thwarted, for any reason,

however weighty, or in any cause, however sacred.

If Mr. Odger, as _Punch_ averred, had marred the grace of his withdrawal

by the manner of it, so _Punch_ marred his candour by asperity. Tom

Hughes here decided against Mr. Odger. Little more than a year later he

supported Mr. Odger as the "working-man candidate" for Southwark, and

provoked a vehement protest from _Punch_ against the "mischievous

nonsense" he had talked at an election meeting. This open letter begins

with a handsome acknowledgment of the services of his old friend, the

author of "the truest and manliest book extant on English public-school

life"; and of his pluck and straightforwardness and recognition that

men, "whether gentle or simple, are, on the whole, made of the same

clay, pulled by the same strings, worthy of the same rights, and liable

to the same duties"; of "his courage in telling necessary if unpalatable

and unpopular truths." None the less "the working-man candidate" sticks

in _Punch's_ gizzard.

He had no objection to working men standing for Parliament, but "they

should be very careful in their choice of fighting-ground." At

Maidstone, in 1870, "they chose it as badly as possible":--

It is true that Mr. Applegarth, the working man's candidate, retired

before the final struggle, finding--according to his own

statement--"that he was too late in the field to make headway

against the popular feeling in Sir John Lubbock's favour!" He had

better have said, "Finding that he had no business ever to have come

forward." What right, _Punch_ asks him, had he, or any man who

wishes to see the best wisdom of England in the House of Commons, in

the field which Sir John Lubbock had occupied in advance of him? All

working men who are worth their salt must admit that no claims that

could be set up on behalf of their order could stand a moment's

comparison with those of Sir John Lubbock on the support of the best

and broadest Liberalism. Let them choose constituencies where they

will have to fight pseudo-Liberalism and genuine Toryism, and

welcome. But in the name of their cause and ours, don't let them put

stumbling blocks in the Parliamentary path of such men as Sir John

Lubbock, or they will only do what they have more than once done

already--make way for the fox, while the lion and the bear are

worrying each other.

The underlying assumption that "the best and broadest Liberalism"

sufficed for the needs of the working classes has long since gone by the

board. Here at any rate _Punch_ failed to foresee the inevitable march

in representation summed up in the three stages: Liberal, "Lib.-Lab.,"

Labour. There is, however, a considerable advance on the views expressed

in his letter to Tom Hughes in his welcome to Messrs. Burt and Macdonald

on their election in 1874:--

Earliest among the early birds, _Punch_ was glad to hail his

friends, Messrs. Burt and Macdonald, representatives of Underground

Britain, Members for the Mine, sample black diamonds, "picked

Wallsends." They have sought and found the fairest audience in the

world. _Punch_ will take his Davy that any light theirs can throw

on dark places will be gladly received; that all they have to say

to the purpose will be attentively--nay, respectfully--listened to,

and weighed as carefully as was ever corve at pit-bank. And really

these pioneers of the pick--hewers, we presume, of a way for other

Working-men Representatives, equally stout and worthy--are about

the only novelty, as far as _Punch_ can presage, of the new

Parliament, always except the Parliament itself, with its sudden

swap of sides and strangely altered balances of Power.

[Sidenote: _Truckling to the Working Classes_]

This friendly greeting, anticipating without misgiving the extension of

Labour representation, must not blind us to the fact that throughout the

period under review _Punch_ was gradually becoming more and more

confirmed in his championship of the middle class as the backbone of the

country, the real power of the nation. The appeal in support of the

funds raised to support the children of Ernest Jones, the Chartist poet,

who died in 1868, is generously worded. But Chartism was long extinct,

and Jones, a man of good family, had quarrelled with most of the other

leaders on his release from gaol in 1850, and his former colleagues had

"freely denied both his disinterestedness and his sincerity." Landor had

pronounced his verses noble, and _Punch_ appealed to both Conservatives

and Liberals on the broad ground that a brave man had died poor.

The well-deserved rebuke administered to "van-demons," "persons whose

only notion of enjoyment consists in getting drunk, and then howling

songs and playing horns as they drive homeward from their

drinking-bout," can be paralleled from the protests repeatedly uttered

in 1920 against the char-à-banc nuisance with its attendant "bellowing

and braying." But a much more combative note is struck in the verses on

the tendency to kow-tow to the working man published in 1872, at a time

when the rise in prices, especially in that of coal, and the hardships

of the middle classes and the small income-tax payer coincided with

unusual prosperity among the working classes and particularly amongst

the miners:--

"WHY SHOULD THE POOR BE FLATTERED?"

_Hamlet_, Act v., Sc. 1.

"Why should the Poor be flattered?"

Art foolish, Hamlet, trow?

All else are torn and tattered,

None else are flattered now.

Your Clown, our race accusing,

Declared our wits astray:

We beat him at abusing

Ourselves. Behold our way!

Our Queen mis-spends her income,

Her Court's all fashion's slaves,

The Lords are feeble Ninkum-

Poops, and the Commons, knaves.

Our soldiers are no fighters,

Our sailors cannot sail,

Our bishops shame their mitres,

Our merchants cheat and fail.

* * * * *

Our architects are Vandals,

Unfit to rear a stone;

Our music-writers Handels

To no ears but their own.

Only the so-called Worker,

The Stalwart Son of Toil,

Never from that a shirker,

Never in brawl or broil.

That sober, saving Being,

The nation's "heart and core,"

Him we are all agreeing

To flatter--and much more.

* * * * *

"Why should the poor be flattered?"

You pause for a reply--

But, if our brains are battered,

Dear Hamlet, don't ask why.

When critics complained of the extravagance of the rich in their

entertainments and house-decoration and found in the newspaper accounts

of this luxury an explanation of industrial discontent and strikes for

higher wages, _Punch_ did not hesitate to fall back on the disputable

argument that the consumption of luxuries involved the profitable

employment of those who produce them:--

Suppose, instead of flowers and dessert at £200, including peaches

at a guinea a-piece; suppose, instead of a house decorated by Mr.

Owen Jones, and a set of aluminium plate, millionaires were to

spend their money in founding schools and scholarships, for

instance, and in educating their poor relations' children, and

sending them to the Universities; even suppose they expended it in

almshouses, and Peabodying the destitute, the mechanical

working-classes would have far less cause to be satisfied with them

than they are now. It may be that there is a wiser and a better use

for riches than lavish expenditure on the productions of

market-gardening and decorative art; but the consumption, at any

rate, benefits producers, and enables employers in those lines of

business to pay the artisans and labourers the higher wages. So the

working-classes, at least, need not grumble.

[Illustration: PROSPEROUS JOHN]

The complaints of the income-tax payer, when it stood at 3d. or 4d.,

leave us cold, and envy rather than compassion is excited by the bitter

cry of the consumer who had to pay 30s. or even 36s. a ton for coal or

1s. 3d. for meat. Otherwise there is an extraordinary similarity in the

comments and protests which fill the pages of _Punch_ in the years

1871-1873 to those which have been so painfully familiar since November,

1918. The prosperity and extravagance of the miners is constantly

referred to. They are accused of being overpaid and, in consequence, of

not working steadily. The "vicious circle" is neatly summarized in a

doggerel verse:--

Strikes follow strikes; the reason why,

High wages rendered prices high;

Then Working-Men for wages higher

Struck, and to still more pay aspire.

Such aspiration what will crown?

It is "Excelsior!" upside down.

When Lord Lyttelton, at a harvest festival at Hagley, compared the

conduct of the agricultural labourers with the extravagance of the

workmen in the Black Country, _Punch_, disavowing all criticism of the

Black Country as dangerous, made bold to ask how it was possible for a

Northern pitman to save his means:--

He has only a house found him, rent-free, all the coals he

requires, medical attendance and medicine when he or any member of

his family is ill, and, at the lowest, seven shillings a day. For

this miserable wage, and for these trumpery advantages, the artisan

of the pit is expected to do, actually, six hours' work daily. How,

thus crushed and starved, can he save anything? If a malignant

aristocrat suggests that many an educated gentleman manages on far

less, working, moreover, twice as hard, bringing up a family in the

right way, and even paying for life assurance, _Mr. Punch_ scorns

to argue with a bloated Dives, who would compare a white-handed

swell with Nature's nobleman, the hardy son of toil, and the real

strength and glory of the nation. Heave a coal at the head of the

insolent cynic.

[Sidenote: _Victims of the Income Tax_]

In 1873 the wages in some collieries had gone up to 10s. or 15s. a

day:--

To be content with from 10s. to 15s. a day is to be satisfied with,

say, some £234 a year. If that is to be earned by mining here,

there can be no inducement for any skilled miner to betake himself

to gold or diamond diggings. He can live in clover, on enough to

satisfy all his wants, by raising black diamonds at home. For a

miner, an income of the above amount is a salary much more adequate

than £5,000 for a Law Officer of the Crown. The miner has no

appearances to keep up in a mine. He need not incur any expenses

but those which are necessary for his personal wants and pleasures,

including champagne and dog-fighting; which, the former luxury as

well as the latter amusement, he can manage to afford well enough

by a judicious economy above-ground, of lodgings, furniture, and

clothes.

Coals went up to 50s. a ton in London this year and the cry of the

middle classes, of whom _Punch_ was now the great champion, was echoed

with great fervour in an article on a speech by Sir William, then Mr.

Vernon Harcourt:--

Mr. Vernon Harcourt, in some of his late speeches, has placed

himself in striking contrast with most of the other leading

politicians, both Liberal and Conservative, by speaking the truth.

For example, at the Druids' Dinner the other day, in discussing the

impost by which the incomes of a part of the people are taxed to

pay the expenses of the whole, instead of attempting to defend

confiscation with sophistry, and to stifle complaint with sneers,

he condemned the false and dishonest apology, alleged by financial

swindlers' advocates on behalf of the Income-tax, that it weighs

only on the rich who are well able to pay it, and he maintained

that, on the contrary, it falls "with the greatest severity on the

poorest of all the classes of the community--that which, upon

limited means and small profits, has to keep up a state of

respectability." The lie which Mr. Vernon Harcourt refuted is one

of those lies which Statesmen are very apt to tell in talking to

simpletons; lies coupled with truths, from which the generality of

people at public meetings have not sense enough to disentangle

them. It is quite true that the rich are well able to pay the

Income-tax; but to say that the Income-tax weighs only on them is

telling a falsehood which transcends common lying. The rich, as a

rule, can afford to live up to their incomes, and it matters

nothing to wealthy people whether their incomes are taxed, or

duties are imposed upon the luxuries on which they expend them. The

class rightly described by Mr. Harcourt as the poorest of the

country consists of persons under the necessity of living as much

within their incomes as possible. They need to make all the

provision that ever they can against ruin constantly staring them

in the face. The Income-tax, substituted for indirect taxation,

wrings from them the savings they ought to put by, and, by way of

compensation, offers them the advantage of buying cheapened

superfluities, which, how cheap soever, are too dear for them at

any price. Thus are their slender incomes in large measure

confiscated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and amends are made

them with facilities to squander the rest.

[Illustration: FROM THE COAL DISTRICTS

MY LADY: "I'm afraid I must give up the pine-apple, Mr. Green! Eight

shillings is _really_ too much!"

SUCCESSFUL COLLIER: "Just put 'un up for _me_, then, Master. 'Ere's 'arf

a sovereign; and look 'ere--yer may keep the change if yer'll _only tell

us 'ow to cook 'un_!"]

[Sidenote: _Colliers and Cormorants_]

References to the champagne-habit among the miners abound throughout

this year. A picture shows a miner buying a pine-apple which a lady

could not afford. Their practice of travelling first-class is also

reprobated. But the bitterest explosion of _Punch's_ wrath against the

pampered aristocrats of industry was provoked by a speech in which John

Bright complacently dwelt on "the growth of material prosperity and

comfort in every class." To this _Punch_ vehemently demurred:--

Clerks of all kinds, Civil servants, fund-holders and annuitants

with fixed incomes, landowners, doctors, lawyers, and professional

men in general, is that so? Do you find it so?

When Mr. Bright said "every class," did he not mean to say, or, at

least, should he not have said "certain classes"? It is quite true

that the shoddy class, and the class of great speculators, have

prospered exceedingly, to as great an increase of their material

comfort as increasing wealth could procure them. A proportionate

growth of material comfort and prosperity has obviously been

experienced by the operatives and mechanics, otherwise called the

Working Classes--although there are classes who may be said to do

some little work, other than manual labour, to be sure. Do not

coal-miners for a fair day's work obtain at least a full two days'

wages; do they not drink champagne; and have not they and the rest

of our flesh-and-blood amongst them, drunk us out of the Alabama

difficulty? They have grown in content too--the Striking Classes.

They and the other classes that grasp with one hand and squander

with the other, and go on grasping and squandering, and thereby

raising prices higher and higher every day, they, all of them,

indeed are without doubt increasingly prosperous and comfortable,

but they are not everybody. There are a very great many other

people besides, who constitute everybody else, and these, so far

from being more prosperous and comfortable than they once were, can

now no longer afford the luxuries, or even the necessaries, they

then could, but have to go without.

The ugly phrase about the Alabama claims was not _Punch's_ own coinage,

but he was not in a mood to mince his words where the miners were

concerned. The charges against overpaid workmen and profiteers have a

strangely familiar ring. And so has the reference, though not under the

now familiar name, to the practice of "Ca' Canny," which, however, had

been in occasional use for many years before _Punch_ suggested, in 1874,

that it might be met by reprisals:--

COLLIERS AND CORMORANTS

The _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_ informs consumers, already

subjected by producers to excessive extortion, that at

Motherwell:--

"At a mass meeting of Scotch miners on Thursday, 3,000 colliers

resolved to work only four days per week, and only eight hours per

day, in order to reduce the output, and to keep up prices."

But suppose the butchers and poulterers combined against them, as

they combine against the public, what then? And could not

the vintners agree to raise "these rapacious colliers' Champagne to

some four or five pounds a bottle? Perhaps they will try.

Already Lord Shaftesbury had spoken plainly on the results of that

"enormous increase of wages which had lately taken place in nearly every

class of working men," even going to the length of endorsing the view

that high wages, when unaccompanied by self-control, were the curse of

the working classes:--

Of course, where economy and prudence were practised the condition

of the Working Man should be improved by higher wages; but there

was recklessness and improvidence. The sudden increase of money had

been productive of the greatest possible mischief, and so long as

these habits continued he could not but think that an increase of

wages was a positive infliction to the Working Man, his wife, and

his children.

This bold statement prompted _Punch_ to reduce the argument to an

absurdity, or something near it, by suggesting that the true way of

planting the spirit of self-control in the minds of the people would be

simply to lower their wages to the requisite standard. Simultaneously he

vindicates the character of the working classes for thrift and sobriety

in the following ironical eulogium:--

The Working Classes, it is surely not too much to say, spend every

little increase of wages they obtain by their harmless strikes

chiefly in the education of their children, and in the purchase of

the appliances needful to make home happy. If they are at all

extravagant is it not in books, and in the dress which some of them

are a little too apt to lavish on their wives? For the vast

improvement evident in their habits we have to thank not only the

Licensing Act, but also the Trades' Unions Act; and moreover the

Conservative Reform Bill, which has rendered them, as Mr. Lowe

said, our masters--if not their own.

[Illustration: ONE-HANDED JUSTICE

FIRST RUFFIAN: "Wot was I hup for, and wot 'ave I got? Well, I floor'd a

woman and took 'er watch, and I've got two years and a floggin'."

SECOND RUFFIAN: "Ha! _I_ flung a woman out o' the top floor winder; an'

I've on'y got three months!"

FIRST RUFFIAN: "Ah, but then _she was yer wife_!"]

[Sidenote: _Punch and Capital Punishment_]

The reference to working men's wives is especially ironical, for _Punch_

was at this time engaged in a vigorous campaign of protest against the

very lenient sentences passed on men for brutal assaults on their wives.

References to this subject abound in these years in prose and verse and

cartoons, culminating in the year 1874. He strongly supported resort to

flogging in such cases. We have already noticed the modification, indeed

the practical abandonment, of his old hostility to capital punishment.

The cause of this conversion is curious. It is hardly too much to say

that it was largely the result of a remarkable speech made by John

Stuart Mill--a true humanitarian if ever there was one--on the measure

introduced in April, 1868, to make executions private. _Punch_, though

he often differed from Mill, had the greatest respect for his fearless

independence and integrity, and was evidently profoundly impressed by

Mill's speech[5] in reply to Mr. Charles Gilpin (the Member for

Northampton), who had argued in favour of the abolition of capital

punishment, and we find the following admirable summary of it in his

"Essence of Parliament":--

The speech of the night was that of Mr. Mill, who approved of many

of the labours of the "philanthropists," but said that they ought

to know when to stop. To deprive a criminal of the life of which he

had proved himself unworthy--solemnly to blot him out from the

fellowship of mankind, and from the catalogue of the living--was

the most appropriate and the most impressive mode in which society

could deal with so great a crime as murder. Imprisonment would be

far more cruel, and less efficacious. None could say that this

punishment had failed, for none could say who had been deterred,

and how many would not have been murderers but for the awful idea

of the gallows. Do not bring about an enervation, an effeminacy in

the mind of the nation; for it is that to be more shocked by taking

a man's life than by taking all that makes life valuable. Is death

the greatest of all earthly ills? A manly education teaches us the

contrary; if an evil at all, it is one not high in the list of

evils. Respect the capacity of suffering, not of merely existing.

It is not human life only, not human life as such, but human

feelings, that should be held sacred. Moreover, taking life for

murder no more implies want of respect for life than fining a

criminal shows want of respect for property. In countries where

execution is morbidly disliked there is no abhorrence of the

assassin. Mr. Mill added that we had been in danger of reducing all

our punishments to nothing; and, though that disposition had

stopped, our penalties[6] for brutal crimes (for which he earnestly

recommended the Scourge) were ridiculously light, and ought to be

strengthened.

[Footnote 5: It is strange that in the full account of Mill's

Parliamentary activities given by Sir Leslie Stephen in his article on

Mill in the D.N.B. no mention is made of this speech. Nor can I find any

reference to it in Bain's _Reminiscences_.]

[Footnote 6: Mill's actual words were "flogging--a most objectionable

punishment in ordinary cases, but a particularly appropriate one for

crimes of brutality, especially crimes against women." (Hansard, 3rd

series, Vol. cxci., p. 1,054.)]

[Sidenote: _The Organ Grinder Nuisance._]

It will be noted that Mill here met the argument which _Punch_ had

advanced in earlier years as to the relative severity of long

imprisonment and capital punishment, and answered it on the humanitarian

ground that the former was more cruel as well as less efficacious. Mill,

as we notice elsewhere, had more than anyone else shaken _Punch's_

hostility to woman suffrage, but the effect of his speech on capital

punishment was even greater. It must not be forgotten, however, that

Mill had been in the forefront of the movement for securing the

prosecution of General Eyre for his drastic suppression of the riots in

Jamaica. _Punch_ supported General Eyre throughout, and it may well have

been that on the question of capital punishment he was influenced by the

principle _fas est et ab hoste doceri_, even though the opponent was

undermining his own position. On more general grounds one can well

understand that _Punch_, as an independent observer and thinker, would

admire and be impressed by the candour and detachment from party ties

which marked Mill's political career.

The change in _Punch's_ views on the claims of Labour, especially

organized labour, has already been sufficiently illustrated. But it did

not prevent his espousing the cause of workers where the conditions were

bad, the hours long and the pay inadequate. _Punch's_ protracted

campaign against the organ grinders was no doubt to a considerable

extent due to Leech's sensitive nerves, and to sympathy with

brain-workers such as Babbage, the mathematician, who declared that "one

quarter of his entire working power had been destroyed by audible

nuisances," but his support of Mr. Bass's Bill in 1864 was largely based

on the fact that the business was conducted by undesirable aliens, and

that the Italian _padrone_ was an employer of sweated labour. In 1871

there is a cartoon satirizing the strong measures taken by the police

against a demonstration of child match-makers at a time when adult

agitators were allowed to preach Revolution and Communism in Hyde Park,

and in the same year and month, when a post-mistress was convicted of

theft and forgery, the evil is traced to the temptation to which

underpaid officials were subjected. _Punch_ had already predicted that

in any national emergency the patriotism of the mercantile marine could

be implicitly relied on, a prophecy splendidly realized in the Great

War, and in 1873 he lent a vigorous helping hand to Samuel Plimsoll in

his campaign against the "Coffin-Ships":--

Let horrified shipowners never so oft

His charges, indignant, fling back,

I call him the cherub who sits up aloft

To keep watch for the life of Poor Jack!

[Illustration: THE COFFIN-SHIPS

POLLY: "Oh, dear Jack! I can't help crying, but I'm so happy to think

you're not going in one of those _dreadful ships_!"

JACK: "What, Davy Jones's decoy ducks! No, no, lass--never more. Thanks

to our friend Master Plimsoll, God bless him!"]

Simultaneously _Punch_ printed a cartoon assuming that "Jack" would

never again be sent to sea in one of "Davy Jones's decoy ducks." This

was rather premature, as Plimsoll's campaign to secure the compulsory

load-line which began in 1870, and in which he showed more zeal than

discretion, did not lead to legislation until 1876. But with all his

faults Plimsoll earned his title of "The Sailor's Friend" and justified

_Punch's_ salutation.

THE CHURCHES

The annals of Church and State history were rich in events of prime

importance during the years 1857-1874. When one reflects that this short

period witnessed the removal of Jewish disabilities, the publication of

_Essays and Reviews_, the much-canvassed appointments of Temple and

Stanley, the resounding controversies which arose over Colenso and

Jowett, the Mackonochie and Purchas trials, and the Disestablishment of

the Irish Church, it will be seen that _Punch_, in view of the keen

interest he had taken from the very first in the relations of Church and

State and Society, found an almost embarrassing wealth of material for

comment and criticism. On all these subjects he had a good deal to say,

and he said it with very much the same mixture of intolerance and common

sense, of rationalism and reverence which marked his utterances in

earlier years. He professed to represent the majority of English

Protestants: he was avowedly Erastian in his maintenance of the

supremacy of the Law Courts in all cases; he was the unrelenting enemy

of Extreme Ritual, the Confessional, and any attempts to revive

monasticism; and on occasion he was ready to bang the "No Popery" drum

as loudly as ever.

When Béranger died in 1857, his burial prompted a tribute in verse which

begins with the lines:--

Ah Béranger, you brave old singer,

Of all the things you hated worst,

That felt your lash's lustiest stinger

Tyrant and Jesuit were first.

In _Punch's_ view there was nothing to choose between the two. But his

hostility was not confined to one Order: it embraced Vaticanism in the

widest sense, and there were many moments when he anticipated, and acted

on, Gambetta's phrase, "Le cléricalisme, c'est l'ennemi." Thus, to take

one instance, the demonstration of Irish Roman Catholics at Blackheath

at the close of 1862 moved him to fury. It was the time of the French

occupation of Rome, and the spectacle of these "Irish Yahoos" hurrooing

for the Pope and groaning for Garibaldi was altogether too much for

_Punch_. He would have quenched their zeal for the "temporal absolutism"

of the Pope with water from a fire-engine, and he described the

demonstrators as "prepared to shed the last drop of their blood if the

perpetual enslavement of the Romans should require that precious

sacrifice." The French, by their intervention, were only "propping by

force the rule of superstition." This was just after Garibaldi had been

wounded at Aspromonte, and when the bullet was removed _Punch_ said that

this, at any rate, was a true relic. Rome--Papal Rome--was to him the

Scarlet Lady, a red rag to John Bull.

As a set-off to this special hostility to the Roman Communion, it is

only fair to admit that other Churches and Sectarianism generally came

in for a great deal of shrewd and, at times, bitter criticism. _Punch_

was by no means an orthodox Churchman. Kingsley and Maurice and Stanley

were his heroes. He stood for comprehension and toleration, and fair

play for the "Higher Criticism." He had far more sympathy with underpaid

curates than opulent bishops--indeed, he had little respect for the

episcopal bench, if we except Temple and Tait.

The Sabbatarianism of Evangelicals, Presbyterians, and Nonconformists

generally, continued to excite him to indignation or derision--as when

in 1858 Sunday walking was tabooed by some Scots fanatics, who also

sought to stop all Sunday sailings, or when early in 1861 a controversy

arose in Scotland as to whether the sale of milk was permissible on that

day.[7]

[Footnote 7: Within our own times the milking of cows on Sunday was

objected to by Scottish Sabbatarians.]

In 1868 the Lord's Day Observance Society addressed a memorial to the

Brighton Railway Company against Sunday trains, which ended as

follows:--

"Lastly, as recognizing the Christian principle of a particular

Providence, we cannot conceal from ourselves the conviction of the

signal instances of the Divine displeasure in two accidents on the

Sabbath Day, one of which in the Clayton Tunnel ended in the

hurrying of several lives in a moment of time into eternity and

which, in a financial point of view, resulted in a loss to the

proprietary of not less than £50,000."

[Illustration: THE BROMPTON AREA-SNEAK]

_Punch_ acidly comments on the authors of this "pretty specimen of

snuffle," that they evidently know no more about the Grand Prix than

they do about the Tower of Siloam.

The notion that Sunday should be a day of gloom and that religion should

be divorced from cheerfulness found no support in _Punch_. A few years

later, that is in 1871, he records with amazement the utterance of a

Scottish minister who, at a children's _soirée_ held at Kincardine,

forbade them to applaud, and told them "there would be nothing of that

kind, and no laughter in Heaven." In the same year, under the heading of

"Sabbatarian Progress," we read:--

The Sunday Closing Bill's referred

To a select committee,

We view concession to absurd

Fanaticism with pity.

It was the same year that _Punch_ got into hot water over a picture of

Keene's. In it an old lady remarks to a guest: "They're all alike, my

dear. There's our Susan (it's true she's a Dissenter), but I've allowed

her to go to Chapel three times every Sunday since she has lived with

me, and I assure you she doesn't cook a bit better than she did the

first day!!" The Young Men's Christian Association at Dover, in

consequence of this flippancy, decided that they would not take in

_Punch_ as being a paper hostile to religion. _Punch_ displayed a ribald

impenitence, making great play with the speeches delivered by the Mayor,

Mr. Knocker, and a Mr. Mowll, and the hostile decree was rescinded

shortly afterwards.

[Sidenote: _Glaring Contrasts in the Church_]

When the scandal of the sale by public auction of pews in fashionable

churches came up in 1858 it was used as a stick with which to beat

Puseyism. But when the Bishop of Exeter, on April 23, made an eloquent

appeal in connexion with the want of church accommodation for the

people, denounced the pew system as illegal, and declared that to seat

only fifty-eight per cent. of the inhabitants of London 670,000 sittings

would be required, _Punch_, forgetting his ancient feud with "Henry of

Exeter," congratulated him on these gleams of real liberality. But what

chiefly concerned _Punch_ as a Church Reformer were the glaring

contrasts which existed in the "richest and poorest Church in the

world." He was disgusted at the "snobbery" of the archbishops in kindly

sanctioning a Registry for Curates, like a Registry for Servants:--

... It would appear from these figures [quoted from _The Times_],

that Curates are expected to perform the cure of souls about as

cheaply as the salters work the cure of herrings. Well, _Floreat

Ecclesia_! and Heaven bless the Bishops! Of course, it's all just

as it should be, or the Registry of Church Servants would never

have been sanctioned. The Bishops have full knowledge of the

present scale of wages at which Curates may be hired, and by

sanctioning the registry they, of course, approve the scale. So,

_Floreat Ecclesia_! and Heaven bless the Bishops! The Curates are

the men-of-all-work in the Church, and receive as recompense a

maid-of-all-work's wages. Proportionally, their pay is really not

much more: for they have to live like gentlemen, which kitchen

servants have not.

[Illustration: A HOME THRUST

"Ah, Bishop, what a heavenly sermon that was of yours last Sunday, about

worldliness and the vanities of the flesh!--it nearly made me cry! And I

say, Bishop, _how hard it hit you and me_!!!"]

When the question of revising and shortening Church Services was

discussed in the same year, _Punch_ suggested as an alternative the

discontinuance of all sermons except on special occasions. But the most

pointed of his criticisms throughout this period are directed against

Ritualism and in particular the use of the Confessional. High Anglican

Ritualism was to him the Chambermaid of the Vatican. As for the

Confessional, it was "a dangerous and disgusting practice."

[Sidenote: Father Ignatius]

In the autumn of 1858 _Punch_ printed a cartoon on "Soapy Sam's"

dangerous flirtation with the Scarlet Lady, accompanied by a letter

advocating more drastic treatment of those who practised the

Confessional, and later on in the year Tait, then Bishop of London, is

applauded for his intention to deal faithfully with Ritualists and

credited with saying: "You must not bring your toys to Church."

_Punch's_ attacks on the Ritualists exhibit a steady crescendo in

freedom and even brutality through the 'sixties, and, admitting the

sincerity of his dislike, little excuse can be found for the publication

of such tasteless pictures as that, for example, of the sentimental

young lady who observes to her sister, _à propos_ of a sandalled curate,

that "it is no use working slippers for him, and mother says he doesn't

wear braces." Throughout the years 1864 and 1865 the vagaries of

Brother, or Father Ignatius (the Rev. Joseph Leycester Lyne) are held up

to unqualified contempt. But this "Histrio Anglicanus," as _Punch_

called him, invited ridicule by his extravagances and those of his troop

of mimic monks. The point of _Punch's_ attack was that they were not

real members of a monastic order, but mountebanks who played at being

Romanists and occasionally imposed on Roman Catholics by their "profane

tomfoolery." Father Ignatius, moreover, was doubly obnoxious to _Punch_,

for he was not only a mock monk, but an extreme obscurantist who

fulminated against the Higher Criticism and all liberal theologians. No

quarter was therefore given to him in verse or prose. He is treated in

"Spoiling the Game" as a dangerous lunatic:--

Brother Ignatius wears a monk's gown

(A strait waistcoat were suitable wear),

Brother Ignatius shaveth his crown--

'Twould be well were his whole head shaved bare.

[Illustration: HEIGHT OF FASHION

ARDENT RITUALIST: "Oh, Athanasius, it's charmingly becoming!"]

At this time Father Ignatius was established in Norwich; it was in after

years that he moved to Llanthony Abbey in the Black Mountains, a most

appropriate choice of residence; and the campaign of contempt reached a

ribald climax in the issue of July 15, 1865, which contained "A Modern

Gregorian Tone: a Chaunt pointed according to the Use of Norwich." This

Chaunt, which was founded on an actual dissension amongst the

brotherhood, gives an extremely diverting account of the mutiny provoked

by the rigorous dietary imposed by the Superior--with dispensations in

his own favour. It is "funny without being vulgar." But the prose

article on the next page, "Ignatius and his Monkeys," deviates into

scurrility at the outset:--

It is not true that Brother Ignatius and the monks, his associates,

have removed from their monastery at Norwich to the Zoological

Gardens, Regent's Park, and there taken up their abode in the

Monkey House.

Where _Punch_ showed a want of justice as well as of perspective was in

treating all or nearly all Ritualists as if they were on the same level

with Father Ignatius. In 1869, when Mr. Mackonochie maintained the claim

of "Church Courts for Church Causes," _Punch_ was not content with

declaring that parsons were unfit to do legal justice; he challenged

them to declare whether they were prepared to emulate the example and

martyrdom of Becket; he bade them get their heads shaved or betake

themselves to Rome. The "Pastoral to Mr. Mackonochie and Co." shows a

slightly more conciliatory spirit, and admits that they were gentlemen

and scholars, and did a great deal of practical good and hard work among

the poor. None the less _Punch_ charges them with playing a game--"a

game dangerous to your own morality and that of your party-spirited

followers, who almost believe in your infallibility." Hence _Punch's_

final advice: "If you cannot become wholly Roman or wholly Greek, _set

up for yourselves_, but do not remain the ecclesiastical mermen you are

at present."

The Purchas case was treated lightly at first in the lines on "The Dean

and the Parson":--

DEAN OF RIPON TO PARSON PURCHAS

DEAN (Sings)--

The Judges have spoken. Now don't be irascible:

Off with your Tunicle, Stole, Alb and Chasuble.

PARSON P. (Sings)--

That's true, Mr. Dean, but they also declare

That a cope in Cathedrals all clergy must wear

On high days and Sundays--

DEAN (Sings _fortissimo_)--

What me wear a cope!

On Sunday or Anyday

Go to the ---- Pope. (Exeunt in opposite directions.)

[Sidenote: _A Ritualist A B C_]

But _Punch_ was seriously annoyed by the report of a meeting of

Ritualists at which it was unanimously resolved to disobey the judgment

of the Privy Council; and made no secret of his satisfaction when the

Archbishop of Canterbury "turned down" the protest of 5,000 Anglicans

headed by Pusey. A little earlier he had published an A B C for youthful

Anglicans, showing a considerable knowledge of, but absolutely no

respect for vestments. It may suffice to quote two entries:--

T is the Thurible, whose very smell

Incenses the people and makes them rebel.

* * * * *

Y is the Yeoman who now never enters

His old Parish Church, and has joined the Dissenters.

These jocularities, though not delicate, may pass. The worst examples of

_Punch's_ controversial zeal were prompted by the Confessional; and the

worst of all is the set of verses headed, "A good sound Confession,"

describing how a priest was soundly horsewhipped and kicked downstairs

by an irate husband who returned home to find his wife on her knees

before her Confessor. The priest, be it added, unctuously professes to

have enjoyed his flagellation as an exquisite mortification.

It is pleasant to turn from these exhibitions of virulent if honest

antipathy to the treatment of those controversies in which freedom of

thought was involved. _Punch's_ earlier verses on _Essays and Reviews_,

published in 1861, are more distinguished for their wisdom than their

elegance of versification:--

A WORD OF ADVICE TO THE BISHOPS

Denounce Essayists and Reviewers,

Hang, quarter, gag them or shoot them--

Excellent plans--provided that

You first of all refute them.

By all means let the Hangman burn

Their awful book to ashes,

But don't expect to settle thus

Their heterodox hashes.

Some heresies are so ingrained

E'en burning won't remove them,

A shorter and an easier way,

You'll find it--to disprove them.

Be this, right reverends, your revenge,

For souls the best of cures,

Essay Essayists to upset

And to review Reviewers.

The long and ignoble campaign, as a result of which Jowett was for ten

years deprived of the emoluments of his office as Regius Professor of

Greek at Oxford, roused _Punch_ in 1863 to a satiric and imaginary

account of the proceedings in the "Small Debts and Heresies Court at

Oxford."

Jowett, it need hardly be explained, was doubly obnoxious to the

heresy-hunters. He had long been suspect for the liberality of his

religious opinions; he had also contributed to _Essays and Reviews_:--

DE HAERETICO COMBURENDO

A little book[8] Professor Jowett made,

And argued not as one of truth afraid;

But Oxford Dons alike fear truth and Jowett,

And their proceedings not a little show it.

_Punch_ goes on to give utterance to the wishes of the obscurantists:--

Oh for a holocaust of heretics

With Jowett in one common van to mix,

For leave to burn, hang, quarter, disembowel,

Maurice and Williams, Temple, Wilson, Powell!

To teach admiring minds those Acts who follow

That Oxford toleration's wide of swallow,

As wide as from Geneva to Maynooth,

But one thing it won't tolerate--the truth!

[Footnote 8: This probably refers to his work on the Epistles of St.

Paul (1855).]

[Sidenote: _Jowett and Colenso_]

_Punch_ returned to the charge just a year later, at the time of the

vote in Convocation on the question of Jowett's salary:--

IN RE JOWETT