Mr. Punch's History of Modern England. Volume 2 of 4.—1857-1874. Graves Charles Larcom
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.
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.
"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."
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. Bright3 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.
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
The variations of view in