Chapter II: Part I: The Two Nations (1)

MR. PUNCH'S HISTORY OF MODERN ENGLAND

_PUNCH_ AND THE PEOPLE

O! fair and fresh the early spring
Her budding wreath displays,
To all the wide earth promising
The joy of harvest days;
Yet many a waste of wavy gold
Hath bent above the dead;
Then let the living share it too--
Give us our daily bread.

Of old a nation's cry shook down
The sword-defying wall,
And ours may reach the mercy-seat,
Though not the lordly hall.
God of the Corn! shall man restrain
Thy blessings freely shed?
O! look upon the isles at last--
Give us our daily bread.

[Sidenote: _The Founders of "Punch"_]

It is fitting that a chronicle of social life in England in the Victorian age, drawn in its essentials from the pages of _Punch_, should begin with the People. For _Punch_ began as a radical and democratic paper, a resolute champion of the poor, the desolate and the oppressed, and the early volumes abound in evidences of the miseries of the "Hungry 'Forties" and in burning pleas for their removal. The strange mixture of jocularity with intense earnestness which confronts us on every page was due to the characters and antecedents of the men who founded and wrote for the paper at its outset. Of at least three of them it might be said that they were humanitarians first and humorists afterwards. Henry Mayhew, one of the originators and for a short time joint-editor, was "the first to strike out the line of philanthropic journalism which takes the poor of London as its theme," and in his articles in the _Morning Chronicle_ and his elaborate work on _London Labour and the London Poor_, which occupied him intermittently for the best part of twenty years, showed himself a true forerunner of Charles Booth. His versatility was amazing. The writer of the obituary notice of him in the _Athenæum_ observes that "it would not be difficult to show him as a scientific writer, a writer of semi-religious biography, and an outrageous joker at one and the same time." Another member of the original staff was Gilbert à Beckett, who crowded an extraordinary amount of work into his short life as leader-writer on _The Times_, comic journalist, dramatist, Poor Law Commissioner and Metropolitan Magistrate. It was à Beckett's report on the scandal connected with the Andover Union--pronounced by the Home Secretary, Buller, to be one of the best ever presented to Parliament--that led to important alterations in the Statute book, and secured for him, at the age of thirty-eight, his appointment as Metropolitan Police Magistrate. Thackeray's references to "à Beckett the beak" are frequent and affectionate, and on his death in 1856 a noble tribute was paid him in the pages of the journal he had served from its opening number. "As a magistrate, Gilbert à Beckett, by his wise, calm, humane administration of the law, gave a daily rebuke to a too ready belief that the faithful exercise of the highest and gravest social duties is incompatible with the sportiveness of literary genius." These words were penned by Douglas Jerrold, who died within a year of his friend, and was the most ardent and impassioned humanitarian of the three. By the irony of fate Jerrold is chiefly remembered for his sledge-hammer retorts: the industrious and ingenious playwright is little more than a name; the brilliant publicist and reformer, the friend and associate of Chartists, the life-long champion of the underdog is forgotten. Gilbert à Beckett and Henry Mayhew had both been at Westminster. Their people were well-to-do. Douglas Jerrold had known both poverty and privation, and his education was largely acquired in a printer's office. His brief service in the Navy was long enough to make him a strenuous advocate of the claims of the lower deck to more humane treatment. He did not believe that harsh discipline and flogging were necessary to the efficiency of either Service. As a boy he had seen something of the human wreckage of war, and the spectacle had cured him for ever of any illusions as to militarism. But his distrust of Emperors, Dictators and the "King business" generally--always excepting Constitutional Monarchy--was so pronounced that any interference on their part was enough to convert him into a Jingo. How far he was from being a pacificist may be judged from the temper of _Punch_ in the Crimean War, its advocacy of ruthlessness as the best means of shortening the hostilities, and its bitter criticism of Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone, and above all of Cobden and Bright, for their alleged pro-Russian sympathies. In the 'forties Cobden and Bright were the leaders of that group of "middle-class men of enthusiasm and practical sagacity" which directed the Free Trade movement, and they had been supported by _Punch_ in the campaign against the Corn Laws. Douglas Jerrold was the spear-head of _Punch's_ attacks on Protection, Bumbledom, unreformed Corporations, Cant and Snobbery, the cruelty, the inequality, the expense and the delays of the Law. He might be described as being violently and vituperatively on the side of the angels. The freedom of his invective, notably in the articles signed "Q," is beyond belief. Compared with his handling of ducal landlords, the most drastic criticisms of Mr. Lloyd George in his earlier days are as water to wine. At all costs Jerrold was determined that the Tory dogs should not have the best of it.

(The Hungry 'Forties)]

Biographies of the _Punch_ staff do not fall within the scope of this chronicle, but some knowledge of the record and the temperament of the men who gave the paper its peculiar quality for many years is essential to a proper understanding of its influence on public opinion. They were humorous men, but they could be terribly in earnest, and they had abundant excuse for their seriousness. They could not forgive the Duke of Wellington when on August 24, 1841, he declared that England was "the only country in which the poor man, if only sober and industrious, was quite certain of acquiring a competency." They regarded it as "a heartless insult thrown in the idle teeth of famishing thousands, the ghosts of the victims of the Corn Laws.... If rags and starvation put up their prayer to the present Ministry, what must be the answer delivered by the Duke of Wellington? 'Ye are drunken and lazy!'" A few days later Mr. Fielden, M.P., moved "that the distress of the working people at the present time is so great throughout the country, but particularly in the manufacturing districts, that it is the duty of this House to make instant inquiry into the cause and extent of such distress, and devise means to remedy it; and at all events to vote no supply of money until such inquiry be made." The motion was negatived by 149 to 41, and a Tory morning paper complacently observed that "there has been for the last few days a smile on the face of every well-dressed gentleman, and of every well-to-do artisan, who wend their way along the streets of this vast metropolis. It is caused by the Opposition exhibition of Friday night in the House of Commons." The comment on this "spiteful imbecility" is not to be wondered at: "Toryism believes only in the well-dressed and the well-to-do. Purple and fine linen are the instrumental parts of her religion. Her faith is in glossy raiment and a full belly." The Home Secretary stated in reply to a question, about a year later, that the keepers of St. James's Park were particularly ordered "not to admit persons who wore fustian jackets," an order which prompted _Punch_ to remark that in Merry England "labour was ignominy, and your only man the man with white hands and filbert nails." A writer in the _Examiner_ so recently as 1861 could remember the time when the sentries in St. James's Park used, at the point of the bayonet, according to their orders, to dismount women from their pattens, and make them trudge on with them in their hands. It is an old story; as old as the days of Ahasuerus, when "no one might enter the King's gate clothed with sackcloth." _Punch_ never wearied of bringing home to his readers these abrupt contrasts of wealth and poverty. The people were crying for bread and Parliament had been occupied in carrying the Ventilation of the House Bill and the Royal Kitchen Garden Bill. The amount voted for the Royal Stables at Windsor was considerably more than three times what was obtained from Parliament for the education of the poor. _The Times_ of December 2, 1841, quoted from the _Sporting Magazine_ an account of the accommodation provided for the Prince Consort's beagles and Her Majesty's dogs--sleeping beds, compartments paved with asphalt, dry and clean, with roomy and healthy green yards; and boiling and distemper houses detached from the other portions of the building--and bracketed with it the sworn evidence of the late matron and medical attendant at the Sevenoaks Union. The lying-in ward was small and always looked dirty. "There had been six women there at one time: two were confined in one bed. It was impossible entirely to shut out the infection. I have known fifteen children sleep in two beds." Six young girls, inmates of the Lambeth workhouse, were charged about the same time with breaking several panes of glass. In their defence they complained that they had been treated worse in the workhouse than they would be in prison, and said that it was to cause their committal to the latter place they broke the windows. Strange reading this in a comic journal, yet paralleled by similar extracts week after week and month after month. The birth of the Prince of Wales was chronicled in the same issue of the daily papers which contained the "luscious history" of the Lord Mayor's dinner:--

Oh, men of Paisley--good folks of Bolton--what promise for ye is
here! Turkeys, capons, sirloins, asparagus, pheasants, pineapples,
Savoy cakes, Chantilly baskets, mince-pies, preserved ginger,
brandy cherries, a thousand luscious cakes that "the sense aches
at!" What are all these gifts of plenty but a glad promise that in
the time of the "sweetest young prince," on the birthday of that
Prince just vouchsafed to us, all England will be a large Lord
Mayor's table!

[Sidenote: _Fleshpots and Famine_]

When the question of the title of the next King was discussed, _Punch_ boldly suggested Lazarus:--

Let Henry the Fifth have his Agincourt; let him, in history, sit
upon a throne of Frenchmen's skulls; our LAZARUS THE FIRST shall
heal the wounds of wretchedness--shall gather bloodless laurels in
the hospital and workhouse--his ermine and purple shall make
fellowship with rags of linsey-wolsey--he shall be a king enthroned
and worshipped in the hearts of the indigent!

LAZARUS THE FIRST! There is hope in the very sound for the
wretched! There is Christian comfort to all men in the very
syllables! By giving such a name to the greatest king of the earth,
there is a shadowing forth and a promise of glorification to the
beggars in eternity. Poverty and sores are anointed--tatters are
invested with regality--man in his most abject and hopeless
condition is shown his rightful equality with the bravest of the
earth--royalty and beggary meet and embrace each other in the
embrace of fraternity.

O ye thousands famished in cellars! O ye multitudes with hunger and
cold biting with "dragon's tooth" your very vitals! shout, if you
can find breath enough, "Long live Lazarus!"

In those days there was a "Pauper's Corner" in _Punch_, in which the cry of the people found frequent and touching utterance. We have quoted from "The Prayer of the People" as a heading to this chapter. Another short poem deserves to be rescued from these old files, and added to the lyrics inspired by the Anti-Corn Law movement:--

Disease and want are sitting by my hearth--
The world hath left me nothing of its good!
The land hath not been stricken by a dearth,
And yet I am alone and wanting food.
The sparrow on the housetops o'er the earth
Doth find its sustenance, and surely HE
Who gave the mighty universe its birth
Would never love the wild bird more than me.

_Punch_ had no illusions as to the genuineness of the Chartist movement, as may be gathered from his comments on the presentation of the Great Petition in 1842. There might, he owned, be dangerous demagogues who offered evil counsel, but the Chartists themselves had a degree of intelligence, a power of concentration, a knowledge of the details of public business, heretofore unknown to great popular combinations of dissentients:--

There are among the Chartists hard-headed logicians--men keenly
alive to their sufferings, and what is more, soundly schooled as to
the causes of them. We grant that their petition presented to
Parliament contained many follies, very many extravagances--that it
prayed for what the timidity of poverty will call revolutionary
measures; but is it not an axiom in politics, that to get even a
little it is necessary to ask a great deal?

We only call upon Toryism, or Whiggism either, each to show us its
army of 3,000,000 of spotless politicians. But we contend that the
Chartists are foully maligned when they are branded as thieves and
spoilers. It is an old cry that property has its rights; it has
been added--and well added--that property has also its duties. To
these let us subjoin--property has also its cowardice.

Inquiries and investigations into the condition of agricultural labourers and of artisans were already bringing to light many disquieting facts. The physical destitution and spiritual forlornness of the workers in the Midlands were painfully illustrated in the evidence of Mr. Horne on the condition of the operatives of Wolverhampton:--

I have entered the houses and hovels of journeymen locksmiths and
keymakers indiscriminately and unexpectedly, and seen the utmost
destitution; no furniture in the room below but a broken board for
a table, and a piece of plank laid across bricks for a seat; with
the wife hungry--almost crying with hunger--and in rags, _yet the
floor was perfectly clean_. I have gone upstairs, and seen a bed on
the floor of a room seven feet long by six feet high at one side,
but slanting down to nothing, like a wedge, where a husband, his
wife and three children slept, and with no other article in the
room of any kind whatever except the bed.... William
Benton--"Thinks that's his name; can't spell it rightly. Age, don't
know justly--mother says he's turned eighteen. Can't read or write;
can tell some of his letters. Goes to a Sunday school sometimes. Is
of the Baptist school religion, _whatever that is_. Never heard of
Moses; never heard of St. Paul. Has heard of Christ; knows who
Jesus Christ was--he was Adam. Doesn't care much about going to
school if he could...."

You will find poor girls who have never sung or danced; never seen
a dance; never read a book that made them laugh; never seen a
violet or a primrose or other flowers; and others whose only idea
of a green field was derived from _having been stung by a nettle_.

[Sidenote: _The Song of the Shirt_]

The Commission which had been engaged in learning the exact conditions of all the women and children employed in agriculture in England suggested to _Punch_ an imaginary report of an inquiry into the state of the aristocracy, and the moral condition, employment, health, diet, etc., of the residents in Belgrave Square, most of the ladies examined being overworked by violent dancing in overheated rooms. Sweating in the cheap clothes trade was already attracting the notice of reformers, and _Punch_ was on the warpath when a Jew slop-seller prosecuted a poor widow with two children for pawning articles which she had to make up for him. She got 7d. a pair for making up trousers, and earned 7s. a week. It was this episode, exposed in the verses "Moses and Co.," which paved the way for Hood's immortal "Song of the Shirt," the greatest poem, the most noble contribution that ever appeared in the pages of Punch. It was printed in the Christmas number of 1843, and dwarfed all the other contributions to insignificance:--

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread--
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch
She sang the "Song of the Shirt."

"Work! work! work!
While the cock is crowing aloof!
And work--work--work,
Till the stars shine through the roof!
It's O! to be a slave
Along with the barbarous Turk,
Where woman has never a soul to save,
If this is Christian work!

"Work--work--work
Till the brain begins to swim;
Work--work--work
Till the eyes are heavy and dim!
Seam and gusset and band,
Band and gusset and seam,
Till over the buttons I fall asleep,
And sew them on in a dream!

"O men, with sisters dear!
O men, with mothers and wives!
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives!
Stitch--stitch--stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt.

"But why do I talk of Death,
That phantom of grisly bone?
I hardly fear his terrible shape,
It seems so like my own--
It seems so like my own,
Because of the fasts I keep;
Oh God, that bread should be so dear,
And flesh and blood so cheap!

"Work--work--work!
My labour never flags;
And what are its wages? A bed of straw,
A crust of bread--and rags.
That shatter'd roof--and this naked floor--
A table--a broken chair--
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there!

"Work--work--work!
From weary chime to chime,
Work--work--work--
As prisoners work for crime!
Band and gusset and seam,
Seam and gusset and band,
Till the heart is sick and the brain benumb'd,
As well as the weary hand.

"Work--work--work
In the dull December light,
And work--work--work
When the weather is warm and bright;
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the spring.

"Oh! but to breathe the breath
Of the cowslip and primrose sweet--
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet;
For only one short hour
To feel as I used to feel,
Before I knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs a meal!

"Oh, but for one short hour!
A respite however brief;
No blessed leisure for love or hope,
But only time for grief!
A little weeping would ease my heart,
But in their briny bed
My tears must stop, for every drop
Hinders needle and thread!"

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,
A woman sat in unwomanly rags
Plying her needle and thread--
Stitch! stitch! stitch!
In poverty, hunger and dirt,
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch,
Would that its tone could reach the rich!
She sang this "Song of the Shirt."

[Sidenote: _Sir Robert Peel and Hood_]

The story of "The Song of the Shirt" is well told by Mr. M. H. Spielmann in his _History of "Punch"._ Mark Lemon proved himself a great editor by deciding to publish the poem against the expressed opinions of his colleagues, who thought it unsuitable for a comic journal, and also by his omitting the one weak verse in the original MS. Strange to say, the poem does not appear in the index. The sequel may be found in Peel's correspondence, and does honour to a statesman who, while he lived, received scant justice from _Punch_. Though the impact of Hood's burning verses on public opinion was immense and abiding, Hood himself a year later was dying in penury, of consumption. On November 16, 1844, Peel wrote him a letter expressing admiration for his work, and offering him a pension. "I am not conferring a private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the Legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain sum (miserable indeed in amount) in recognition of public claims on the bounty of the Crown." All he asked in return was that Hood would give him the opportunity of making his personal acquaintance. That was impossible owing to the state of Hood's health. Mrs. Hood wrote on January 14, 1845, to beg for prompt assistance: Hood was dangerously ill and creditors were pressing. Peel sent the £100 at once, and on February 17 Hood wrote to thank him "with all the sincerity of a dying man" and to bid him a respectful farewell. He could write no more, though he had wished to write one more paper. Then follow these memorable words, even more needed now than they were seventy-five years ago:--

Certain classes, at the poles of society, are already too far
asunder. It should be the duty of our writers to draw them nearer
by kindly attraction, not to aggravate existing repulsions and
place a wider moral gulf between rich and poor, with hate on one
side and fear on the other. But I am too weak for this task, the
last I had set myself. It is death that stops my pen, you see, not
a pension. God bless you, sir, and prosper all your measures for
the benefit of my beloved country.

Hood died on May 3, 1845, and was buried in Kensal Green, but more than seven years later no tombstone marked his resting-place, and _Punch_ was moved to ask:--

If marble mark the soldier-statesman's grave,
If monuments adorn his place of sleep
Whose hand struck off the fetters from the slave,
And his who sought out woe in dungeons deep,

Did _he_ not fight for Toil's sad sons and daughters?
Was not _his_ voice loud for the worker's right?
Was _he_ not potent to arrest the slaughters
Of Capital and Labour's desperate fight?

Eventually a tombstone was erected, bearing the words: "He sang the Song of the Shirt," but the pension continued to his widow lapsed on her death a year later. A sum of £800, collected by public subscription, was all that was available for the children, Lord John Russell, then Premier, having found himself unable to extend the pension for their benefit, at a time when, as _Punch_ reminded him, the Duchess of Inverness, widow of the Duke of Sussex, was drawing a pension of £1,000 a year. "The Song of the Shirt" rang through the land, but it did not end the hardships of the sweated sempstress. Within a year _Punch_ was moved to indignation by the story of Esther Pierce, paid 6d. for embroidering eighty blossoms on a silk shawl, and charged with pawning the goods of her employer. In 1848, under the heading "The Cheap Shirt Market," we read of a woman prosecuted on a similar charge, who was paid 2s. 6d. a dozen for making up shirts, or 2½d. apiece, and on these earnings supported herself, two children and a husband out of work. As late as 1859 the sweated shirt makers were still receiving only 4s. 6d. a dozen. No wonder is it that when the movement in favour of cottage gardens was frowned upon in some quarters on the ground that flowers here were "out of place," _Punch_ retorted with the bitter jibe: "What has the labourer to do with stocks but sit in them?"

[Sidenote: _The Duke of Norfolk's Panacea_]

No wonder again that a legal pillory of harsh sentences was a constant feature of his pages in the 'forties and 'fifties. A humane magistrate who refused in 1845 to hear a charge of wood-stealing from a hedge brought against a man earning 7s. a week--the common rate at the time for agricultural labourers--stated from the Bench that he knew of good hands in Warwickshire who were earning only 3s. and 3s. 10d. a week. Meat was a luxury: only the elders got bacon: the children potatoes and salt: bread was 10d. a loaf. Yet this was the time when the Duke of Norfolk seriously proposed that the poor should eke out their meagre fare by the use of curry powder,[1] a suggestion that recalls the historic comment of the French lady, shortly before the Revolution, on hearing that the peasantry had no bread, "Then why don't they eat cake?" _Punch_ dealt faithfully with this ducal _gaffe_ under the heading, "A Real Blessing to Landlords":--

The genuine Anti-Appetitive Curry Powder, strongly recommended by
the Duke of Norfolk, is the labourer's only true substitute for
bread and meat. It possesses the singular property of deluding the
empty stomach into a sense of fullness, and is calculated to
relieve those distressing symptoms of vacuity which result from
living on seven shillings a week. It may be warranted to supersede
potatoes and bacon; containing in fact, in itself, the essence of
gammon; and one pinch dissolved in a tumbler of hot water is equal
to a pot of beer. Landed proprietors, not wishing to reduce their
rents, will find this preparation admirably calculated to reconcile
labourers with their present rate of wages by enabling them almost
entirely to dispense with food. Sold in pots, at from one shilling.
Agricultural societies supplied.

N.B.--A liberal allowance on taking a quantity.

[Footnote 1: For the actual speech of the Duke see the _Examiner_ for 1845, p. 786.]

In these years the Dukes were constantly in _Mr. Punch's_ pillory; the Duke of Marlborough for his harsh treatment of his tenantry in connection with the Woodstock Election in 1844; the Duke of Buckingham for prosecuting a rat-catcher, who was fined 18s. or fourteen days for killing a leveret as big as a kitten, and about the same time for prosecuting a poacher for damaging a fence to the amount of one penny; the Duke of Sutherland, in the same year again, for the arbitrary rules enforced on his estate, the whole county being parcelled out into sheep-walks, which suggested to _Punch_ that he should be dignified with the Order of Mutton; the Duke of Richmond for apparently imagining that agricultural troubles could be settled by the simple process of drinking the health of the British labourer; the Duke of Atholl for closing Glen Tilt. Even the Great Duke himself was not immune from criticism and censure. He had done a great work in the past, but he was out of touch with the times and lacking in sympathy with the people. His words reflected his iron temperament: they were like tenpenny nails. In 1845 _Punch_ made bold to suggest that the time for his going to grass had arrived:--

_The Times_ says "he is the leader of the aristocracy." Let him go
and lead the Dukes. He is fit for that, but not any longer for
governing us.... The old Duke should no longer block up the great
thoroughfare of civilisation--he should be quietly and respectfully
eliminated. For the future, let us have him and admire him--in
history.

[Sidenote: _Harsh Sentences on Children_]

Harsh sentences on juvenile delinquents and plebeian offenders under the Game Laws and Sunday Trading Act, the harrying of vagrants, the treatment of destitution as a crime, are a constant spur to _Punch's_ reforming zeal. The hard cases quoted from _The Times_ and many provincial papers include the flogging of a boy for accidentally killing a leveret; the trial of a starving woman for the crime of stealing a faggot worth a penny; the prosecution of two children, aged six and twelve, for picking two handfuls of peas while walking in a field through which there was a path, and the sending of the elder boy to gaol for fourteen days in default of payment of a fine of 6d. and 13s. costs; a sentence of six months' imprisonment for stealing a crab worth 1s. 6d.; the fining of a man 5s. by his vicar because his child, aged nine, had sold a halfpenny worth of sweets to another child on Sunday--which reminds _Punch_ of Herod and the Innocents. In 1841 Lord Brougham, in Parliament, during a discussion on prison discipline, stated that a man "had been confined ten weeks, having been fined 1s., with 14s. costs, because he was absent one Sunday from church." Then in 1846 we have the case of a woman charged with "exciting charity," though she had not solicited alms. As late as 1859 we read of a child of nine in Essex, sent to prison for fourteen days and whipped for stealing ½lb. of butter. Small wonder is it that _Punch_ was a fervent and convinced anti-Sabbatarian, or that he wrote in 1846: "The State does not trouble itself much with education in this country, but the most usual schools for the young and destitute are the prisons." The alternatives of fine or imprisonment heightened the evil, for while the poor delinquent went to gaol the well-to-do offender escaped. Brutal assaults on women were punished by a lenient fine, which the bully could generally pay; fraudulent tradesmen were not deterred from repeating their offences by a money penalty which they could easily afford; it was only the penniless pilferer who was sure of prison. In 1844 we find _Punch_ tracing incendiarism in Suffolk to the greed of the farmers in keeping wages down, and publishing Leech's famous cartoon "The Home of the Rick Burner." _Facit indignatio versum_: here is the picture of "The Fine Old English Gentleman of the Present Time"--in the middle of the Hungry 'Forties:--

I'll sing you a fine old song, improved by a modern pate,
Of a fine Old English Gentleman, who owns a large estate,
But pays the labourers on it a very shabby rate.
Some seven shillings each a week for early work and late,
Gives this fine Old English Gentleman, one of the present time.

* * * * *

In winter's cold, when poor and old for some assistance call,
And come to beg a trifle at the portals of his hall,
He refers them to the workhouse, that stands open wide for all;
For this is how the parish great relieve the parish small,
Like this fine Old English Gentleman, one of the present time.

Here is the portrait of the pauper:--

Houseless, famish'd, desp'rate man,
A ragged wretch am I!
And how, and when, and where I can,
I feed, and lodge, and lie.
And I must to the workhouse go,
_If_ better may not be;
Ay, _if_, indeed! The workhouse! No!
The gaol--the gaol for me.

* * * * *

There shall I get the larger crust,
The warmer house-room there;
And choose a prison since I must,
I'll choose it for its fare.
The dog will snatch the biggest bone,
So much the wiser he:
Call me a dog--the name I'll own--
The gaol--the gaol for me.

The horror of the "Union" inspired some of the most moving pages in Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend" some twenty years later. How deep and well justified it was in the 'forties may be gathered from the scandal of the Andover Union workhouse in '45, the habitual underfeeding of paupers, and the frequent inquests at which verdicts of "natural death" were returned on victims of neglect and even cruelty. The opposition to the humane proposal to establish a lending library at the Greenwich workhouse, following the example of Wandsworth, moved _Punch_ to indignant irony: "Food for a pauper's mind, indeed! It is quite enough to have to find food for his body." In 1851 an inquiry into the management of a workhouse near Leeds revealed that the inmates were fed at a trough, six at a time. In 1857 the workhouse children at Bath were not allowed to see the pantomime _Jack and the Beanstalk_. Owing to the intervention of the Guardians, headed by a clergyman, the children were actually stopped at the door of the theatre. But in "Dust from a Bath-brick" _Punch_ dusted the jackets of the Guardians in his best style. Again and again we find him protesting against the regulation of the new Poor Law which separated man and wife directly they entered the workhouse. For professional mendicants he had no sympathy. Witness the ironical lines on "The Jolly London Beggars":--

A fig for honest occupation,
Beggary's an easier trade;
Industry is mere starvation,
Mendicancy's better paid.

[Sidenote: _Bigamy or Divorce?_]

In the long campaign for the reform of the Marriage Laws _Punch_ never ceased to reiterate his conviction that cheap divorce was a better remedy than the punishment of the brutal husband. Yet when Mr. Justice Maule delivered his historic judgment in 1845, _Punch_ hardly rendered justice to that masterpiece of fruitful irony:--

WAGGERY OF THE BENCH

One Thomas Rollins, as poor as beggary, was arraigned as a
bigamist. His first wife had left him and become no better than one
of the wicked. Whereupon Rollins took another helpmate; and, for
such violation of the law, found himself face to face with Justice
Maule, who, as it will appear, happened to be in one of his
pleasantest humours. He told the culprit, and we doubt not with a
gravity of face worthy of the original _Billy Lackaday_, "that the
law was the same for him as it was for a rich man, and was _equally
open for him_, through its aid, to afford relief." In the like way
that turbot and champagne are the same to Lazarus as to Dives; if
Lazarus could only buy the taste of them. Beggar and rich man have
both the same papillary organs--a dignifying truth for the outcast
wanting a dinner! However, the droll Judge continued his
pleasantry:

"He (Rollins) _should have brought an action_ against the man who
was living in the way stated with his wife, and _he should have
obtained damages_, and then _should have gone to the Ecclesiastical
Court_ and obtained a divorce, which would have done what seemed to
have been done already, _and then he should have gone to the House
of Lords_, and, proving all his case and the preliminary
proceedings, _have obtained a full and complete divorce_; after
which he might, if he liked it, have married again."

There is a delicious vein of humour in this. It smacks of the grave, earnest fun of Swift. How the jest increases in volume as we follow the pauper from court to court--tarry with him awhile in the House of Lords--and finally see him "married again." And then the Judge, in a sustained spirit of drollery, observes:

"The prisoner _might perhaps object to this_, that he had not the
money to pay the expenses, which would amount to about £500 or
£600--_perhaps he had not so many pence_--but this did not exempt
him from paying the penalty for committing a felony, of which he
had been convicted."

Of course not. Therefore Thomas Rollins is in effect not punished for marrying a second wife, but for the turpitude of wanting "about £500 or £600," by means of which he might have rid himself of his first spouse. In England the bonds of Hymen are only to be cut with a golden axe. Assuredly there needs a slight alteration in the marriage service. "Whom God hath joined, let no man put asunder," should be followed by these words, "_Unless paid about £500 or £600 to separate them_."

_Punch_, we are afraid, was inclined, in those days at any rate, to resent any attempt to usurp his functions as a public ironist, even by those who were fighting on the same side as himself. Anyhow, he omitted to mention that the judge sentenced Rollins to one day's imprisonment. But later references to this famous judgment made it clear that _Punch_ recognized that the judge's irony was deliberate and animated by a sincere desire for reform, not by mere irresponsible "waggery."

Against the Game Laws and their administration _Punch_ waged a continuous war. Squires were condemned for the damage done to land by game kept up for the profit of the landlord, hares being fed at the expense of the tenant farmer. John Bull worshipped rank and money, and amongst his idols were hares, pheasants and partridges, with his "bold peasantry" as their constant victims.

[Sidenote: _The Model Labourer_]

The Hon. Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley, M.P., who published a pamphlet in 1845 defending the drastic treatment of poachers, was very roughly handled for his calm assertion of the sacred rights of game; but perhaps the most effective comment on the inequalities of life on the land is to be found in the ironical portrait of "The Model Labourer" in the summer of 1848:--

He supports a large family upon the smallest wages. He works from
twelve to fourteen hours a day. He rises early to dig in what he
calls his garden. He prefers his fireside to the alehouse, and has
only one pipe when he gets home, and then to bed. He attends church
regularly, with a clean smock frock and face, on Sundays, and waits
outside, when service is over, to pull his hair to his landlord,
or, in his absence, pays the same reverence to the steward. Beer
and he are perfect strangers, rarely meeting, except at Christmas
or harvest time; and as for spirits, he only knows them, like meat,
by name. He does not care for skittles. He never loses a day's work
by attending political meetings. Newspapers do not make him
discontented, for the simple reason that he cannot read. He
believes strongly in the fact of his belonging to the "Finest
Peasantry." He sends his children to school somehow, and gives them
the best boots and education he can. He attributes all blights, bad
seasons, failures, losses, accidents to the repeal of the Corn
Laws. He won't look at a hare, and imagines, in his respect for
rabbits, that Jack Sheppard was a poacher. He whitewashes his
cottage once a year. He is punctual with his rent, and somehow, by
some rare secret best known by his wages, he is never ill. He knows
absolutely nothing beyond the affairs of his parish, and does not
trouble himself greatly about them. If he has a vote, it is his
landlord's, of course. He joins in the cry of "Protection,"
wondering what it means, and puts his X most innocently to any
farmer's petition. He subscribes a penny a week to a Burial
Society. He erects triumphal arches, fills up a group of happy
tenants, shouts, sings, dances--any mockery or absurdity, to please
his master. He has an incurable horror of the Union, and his
greatest pride is to starve sooner than to solicit parish relief.
His children are taught the same creed. He prefers living with his
wife to being separated from her. His only amusement is the Annual
Agricultural Fat-and-Tallow Show; his greatest happiness if his
master's pig, which he has fattened, gets the prize. He struggles
on, existing rather than living, infinitely worse fed than the
beasts he gets up for the exhibitions--much less cared about than
the soil he cultivates; toiling without hope, spring, summer,
autumn and winter, his wages never higher--frequently less--and
perhaps after thirty years' unceasing labour, if he has been all
that time with the same landlord, he gets the munificent reward of
six-and-twopence, accompanied, it is true, with a warm eulogium on
his virtues by the President (a real Lord) for having brought up
ten children and several pigs upon five shillings a week. This is
the MODEL LABOURER, whose end of life is honourably fulfilled if he
is able, after a whole life's sowing for another, to reap a coffin
for himself to be buried in!

This is not an imaginary portrait, though some of the touches are heightened by the artist. As for the vote, a good illustration is to be found in the advertisement of the sale of the Earl of Ducie's domain in 1843, quoted by _Punch_ on page 14 of Vol. v., including "the entire village of Nymphfield, wherein are 66 houses and the Ducie Arms, with political influence extending over 1,200 honest yeomen." As for the exhibitions, with their rewards and prizes for the virtuous and industrious poor, _Punch_ was lavish of sarcasm at the expense of this parsimonious and condescending benevolence, when the prizes represented a miserable percentage on the profits which the recipients had earned for their masters by special zeal. So we find him suggesting a prize of £1 to the labourer who had lived the longest number of years on the shortest commons, and during the same period Leech's cartoon of a show where the prize pig is awarded £3 3s. and the prize peasant £2 2s. When baby shows were introduced in the next decade, Lord Palmerston was drawn with his prize agricultural baby, holding up a wizened old labourer with the label "Prize, 30s. Labourer all his life and never wanted to improve his condition." _Punch's_ democratic distrust of Lords and Ladies Bountiful was no doubt in part the cause of his hostility to the Young England movement. From his account of the matter one might gather that Disraeli identified himself with, if he did not actually originate, the fashion of giving prizes to the working classes. Lord John Manners fell an easy prey to "the Democritus of Fleet Street" (as the _Daily Telegraph_ called _Punch_ in later years), when in "England's Trust and other Poems" was penned the memorable _cri de coeur_:--

Though I could bear to view our crowded towns
Sink into hamlets or unpeopled downs;
Let wealth and commerce, laws and learning die,
But leave us still our old nobility.

[Sidenote: _Lord Shaftesbury_]

But "Young England" practised better than its poet preached. For proof one need only turn to the history of the reform of the Factory Acts which _Punch_ unflinchingly supported, while rendering scant justice to the man who started this "great campaign against the oppression of the industrial poor" and carried it to a successful conclusion, or to some of those who lent him most valuable assistance. Of Lord Ashley, afterwards the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, it has been said that if there is a Seventh Heaven he is there. But he was a Tory, who had opposed the Reform Bill of 1832, though he supported Catholic Emancipation and resigned his seat for Dorset in 1846 in the belief that the continuance of the Corn Laws was impracticable; he was an aristocrat; he held pronounced Evangelical views and was a convinced Sabbatarian. On all these grounds he was held suspect by _Punch_. Yet as early as 1833 Lord Ashley was mainly instrumental in securing the passage of a Factory Act, the scope of which was narrowed by the hostility of Whigs, manufacturing capitalists and doctrinaire Radicals. In 1840 he got a Commission appointed, whose report, published in 1842, shocked the conscience of the nation and led to the introduction of a Bill excluding women and children from mines. In the next phase of this humane campaign, when Sir James Graham introduced a Government Bill to regulate labour in factories, Disraeli and the "Young England" group supported Ashley throughout against the refusal of the Government to concede the ten-hour limit. But the Government, supported by Bright and most of the Radical Free Traders, threw all its weight into the scale of the millowners, carried the day against Ashley, "Young England" and most of the official Whigs, and until 1847 the labour of boys from 13 to 18 years of age, and of girls and women to 21, stood at twelve hours a day. The Act of 1847, which limited the hours of work for women and children to ten hours, was imperfectly drafted, and the interpretation placed upon it by the Courts enabled manufacturers to evade its provisions. In 1850 the Government offered a compromise implying a 10½ hour day, which was reluctantly accepted by Lord Ashley. But Disraeli supported Lord John Manners in protesting against this compromise. As his biographers do well to remind us, he condemned it as a breach of faith with the overworked population: the honour of Parliament was concerned in not taking advantage of a legal flaw. The Government again carried the day, but only for the moment; the objects of its critics have long since been more than obtained. Disraeli's speech on this occasion was "instinct with the spirit of _Sybil_"--his finest and best constructed novel. _Sybil_ was published in 1845, and though in its essentials exhibiting a remarkable convergence with the aims of _Punch_, was never mentioned by him at the time. Disraeli was a Jew. Now _Punch_ consistently supported the removal of Jewish disabilities as an act of justice, and when rebuking the Exeter Hall philanthropists for thinking that charity must begin abroad, and for neglecting the starving sempstress for the apostate Jew, Chinese, Hottentots, etc., gave them this excellent advice: "Ye who would convert the Jews, first copy the Jews' great virtue; first take care of your own poor; feed and clothe them, and then, if you will, with the superfluity make converts of the Hebrews." But _Punch_ was no lover of Jews, and least of all of Disraeli. He soon recognized his abilities as a great Parliamentary gladiator; he admitted his courage and tenacity. In the main, however, _Punch_ regarded him at this stage of his career as a brilliant but undesirable alien, a flamboyant charlatan, an untrustworthy and insincere patron of the agricultural interest. Yet _Sybil_ in its pictures of the inequalities and miseries of the social and industrial system then prevailing, was conceived and executed largely in the spirit of Hood's deathbed letter to Peel. Disraeli was never more "on the side of the angels" than when he wrote the dialogue between Egremont and the stranger. The stranger, after observing that while Christianity teaches us to love our neighbours as ourselves, modern society acknowledges no neighbour, adds that society, still in its infancy, is beginning to feel its way. Egremont replies:--

[Sidenote: _The Two Nations_]

"Well, Society may be in its infancy; but, say what you like, our
Queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed." "Which
nation?" asked the younger stranger; "for she reigns over two." The
stranger paused. Egremont was silent, but looked inquiringly.
"Yes," resumed the younger stranger after a moment's interval, "two
nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who
are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts and feelings as if
they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different
planets; who are formed by a different breeding, and fed by a
different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not
governed by the same laws." "You speak of," said Egremont
hesitatingly,--"THE RICH AND THE POOR."

Disraeli's sumptuous upholstery, which Thackeray was so fond of burlesquing, is occasionally apparent in _Sybil_, though one must not forget his own explanation: "I write in irony, and they call it bombast." For the rest the pictures of life in the agricultural and industrial districts, the squalid wretchedness of cellar and hovel, the evils of the truck system and the "tommy-shop" were never more luridly painted by any Chartist writer than by Disraeli in _Sybil_. The details are not exaggerated; they are borne out by sober historians such as S. R. Gardiner in describing the conditions in Manchester, Bethnal Green and Dorsetshire. Disraeli's inability to reproduce the speech of artisans or peasants correctly is a negligible matter. He never made a systematic tour in the slums as Lord Ashley did in preparation for his campaign on behalf of Ragged Schools; he was not a literary realist; but here he was in touch with realities, and we have his own word for it that he wrote from personal observation. The heroes of the book are all on the side of reform; Gerard, the people's leader; St. Lys, the humanitarian parson; Egremont, an aristocrat converted from indifference by contact with the poor; and the martyrs are the victims of the existing system, agricultural labourers on 8s. a week and starving hand-loom weavers. Disraeli has no use for the Lord Marneys and de Mowbrays who complacently acquiesced in the serfdom of the slaves in smock-frocks or even denied that they were badly off. They were not a real aristocracy, a "corporation of the best and bravest," in Carlyle's phrase. But for reasons already given _Punch_ was not prepared to accept Disraeli as an ally. He was too useful as a butt for satire and ridicule, and his oriental personality was antipathetic to _Punch's_ eminently British mind. Moreover, in justice to _Punch_ it must be admitted that there were real divergences. Disraeli opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws, though he lived to describe Protection as dead and damned. The readjustment of the "Two Nations" which, as a leader of the "Young England" movement, he proposed for the remedy and removal of the distress and tumult and anger of the Hungry 'Forties, involved in his view the strengthening of the Sovereign and the maintenance of the leadership of the aristocracy. They were to be awakened to their responsibilities and duties, but not shorn of their rights and privileges. _Punch_ was a thoroughgoing Free Trader and Corn Law Repealer, a believer in measures rather than men, an unsparing critic of Kings and Courts, and whenever he saw an aristocratic head, inclined to hit it. "Young England" only served as a target for satire; _Punch_ refused to recognize the genuine idealism by which the best of the group were animated. But, as one of their defenders has admitted, they were not a real Party, and were concerned with principles rather than specific measures of reform. Idealism which stopped short of immediate action did not appeal to _Punch_. Though often a petulant and intolerant critic, he was always on the look out for practical evidences of reform, legislative, administrative or philanthropic. In 1842 he hailed the decision to close the Fleet Prison, and when it was about to be demolished, wrote in 1845: "Truly there _are_ sermons in stones, and if Beelzebub wanted to preach on the folly, cruelty, ignorance and wickedness of men towards men, even he could not hit upon a more suggestive text than is written--written in tears--on every stone of the Fleet Prison." Of the efforts to bring justice within the reach of the poor he was an impassioned advocate from the very first. When a police magistrate expressed views of which he disapproved he did not hesitate to describe him as "an insufferably ignorant, and therefore insolent, magisterial cur"! That was in 1841. Four years later _Punch_ vociferously applauds a courageous magistrate who committed a "gentleman" to the House of Correction for a brutal assault, and welcomes a revolt against harsh sentences in the action of the Recorder at the Central Criminal Court, who in 1847 refused to send a boy of twelve to prison for stealing £4 12s. from his master "because if he went to prison he might become an expert thief."

[Sidenote: _A Plot Against Prisons_]

In the year 1853 _Punch_ discussed at length, under the title of "A Plot against Prisons," and in the ironical vein which frequently exposed him to misconception by his prosaic readers, "a dangerous conspiracy organized for the purpose of defrauding the gallows and the hulks," and initiated by one of the noblest of many noble Quaker philanthropists:--

The originator of the plot is one Joseph Sturge, who has founded an
establishment, called the Reformatory Institution, in Birmingham,
and placed it under the superintendence of another man named Ellis,
who formerly presided over a similar concern in London, being a
place of resort for young thieves, where they were inveigled, and
seduced into the abandonment of their dishonest calling. To this
end no pains were spared to render the paths of virtue seductive,
by blending as much amusement as possible with the particular
branch of industry the lads were instructed in. The man Ellis,
their enticer from the line of turpitude, is a shoemaker. He says
in his evidence, reported by the House of Commons:

"I used to go and sit with them for two or three hours a day, and I
used to tell them that they might, by governing their tongues,
their tempers and their appetites, and governing themselves
generally, be much more happy if they would put themselves in
harmony with the laws of their own physical nature; and I showed
them how wrong it was to break the social laws that bind society
together, and also the laws of God, and so forth. I considered that
my conversation with them for two or three hours had had a great
effect; and I provided them with wholesome food, and I gave them
clothes to wear, and I surrounded them with as many comforts as I
possibly could."

The Birmingham Institution, under the same management, has also
succeeded to such an extent that it is in contemplation to
establish another there on a larger scale; which, no doubt, will
most seriously tend to impair the utility of those magnificent
edifices, our gaols and bridewells, which everywhere afford such
vast but by no means empty accommodation. A meeting has been held,
Lord Calthorpe in the chair, to carry out the desired object, which
will tend to throw so many turnkeys out of employment, and to which
all persons are asked to subscribe who desire to rob Jack Ketch of
his livelihood, and the Government of convict labour, by
substituting prevention for cure--superseding prison discipline by
reformation.

[Sidenote: _High Life Below Stairs_]

COOK: "Well, to be sure, Mum! Last place I were in Missis always knocked at the door afore she come into the kitchen!!"]