Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (Vol. 1-4). Charles L. Graves
then a testimonial, then a subscription. He is grateful, and promises the Millennium. The trade begins to answer, and he fairly opens shop as a Licensed Agitator. He hires several journeymen with good lungs, and sends agents—patriotic bagmen—round the country to sell his praises and insults, the former for himself, and the latter for everybody else. Every paper that speaks the truth of him is publicly hooted at; everybody who opposes him is pelted with the hardest words selected from the Slang Dictionary. A good grievance is started, and hunted everywhere. People join in the cry, the Agitator leading off and shouting the loudest. The grievance is run off its legs; but another and another soon follows, till there is a regular pack of them. The country is in a continual ferment, and at last rises. Riots ensue; but the Model Agitator is the last person to suffer from them. He excites the people to arm themselves for the worst; but begs they will use no weapons. His talk is incendiary, his advice nothing but gunpowder, and yet he hopes no explosion will take place. He is an arsenal wishing to pass for a chapel or a baby-linen warehouse. He is all peace, all love, and yet his hearers grow furious as they listen to him, and rush out to burn ricks and shoot landlords. He is always putting his head on the block. Properly speaking he is beheaded once a quarter.
A monster meeting is his great joy, to be damped only by the rain [the great open-air meetings of the Chartists were uniformly unfortunate in their weather] or the police. He glories in a prosecution. He likes to be prosecuted. He asks for it; shrieks out to the Government, "Why don't you prosecute me?" and cries and gets quite mad if they will not do it. The favour at length is granted. He is thrown into prison and gets fat upon it; for from that moment he is a martyr, and paid as one, accordingly.
The Model Agitator accumulates a handsome fortune, which he bequeathes to his sons, with the following advice, which is a rich legacy of itself: "If you wish to succeed as an Agitator, you must buy your patriotism in the cheapest market and sell it in the dearest."
PUNCH'S MONUMENT TO PEEL
The monster demonstration of 1848, as a recent writer3 puts it, "was the funeral of Chartism with the Duke of Wellington as the Master of Ceremonies." Hopes of a general rising had been kindled by the revolution in Paris, but they were not fulfilled. The annus mirabilis which set thrones rocking on the Continent and toppled down that of Louis Philippe passed in the main peacefully in England. Feargus O'Connor's monster procession and petition on April 10 ended in fiasco, largely owing to the precautions taken by the Duke of Wellington as Commander-in-Chief—the swearing in of 170,000 special constables (including Louis Napoleon!) and his wise decision to keep the troops as far as possible out of sight. It is right to record the fact that Punch was not moved by these events to desert his "left-centre" position; that he advocated amnesty rather than reprisals. In September, 1849, he published his special "Chartist Petition to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty":—
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY—
WHEREAS Death, the great Gaol-Deliverer, has by Cholera set free from Westminster Prison, Joseph Williams and Alexander Sharpe, foolish men, foolishly preaching the Charter, by means of pike and blunderbuss—
Punch humbly prays that your Majesty will, in this season of political tranquillity, and of grave moral chastisement, give orders for the release of certain misguided men, it is hoped better instructed for the future—and thereupon pardon and set free William Vernon, Ernest Jones, Little Cuffey, and other such offenders, now made harmless by the common sense and common loyalty of the English people.
And your Petitioner will ever Print and Pray—
PUNCH.
Special's Wife: "Contrary to regulations, indeed! Fiddlesticks! I must insist, Frederick, upon your taking this hot brandy-and-water. I shall be having you laid up next, and not fit for anything."
"Little Cuffey"
Ernest Jones was the young poet, a recent recruit of Feargus O'Connor, and Cuffey was the fiery little tailor for whom Punch always had a soft corner in his heart. When Sir George Grey announced that Cuffey had been included in the list of deported prisoners, amnestied on the declaration of peace after the Crimean War, Punch expressed his satisfaction at the release of the "resolute, fire-eating but withal frank-hearted and honest goose-hero of Chartism." But of much greater importance and significance is the striking poem printed in the issue of June 16, 1849, which may be taken as the best condensed summary of Punch's political and social creed in a time of transition. The occasion was a speech of Lord John Russell in the House, declining to entertain proposals for an extension of the franchise. Lord John, it may be recalled, was nicknamed "Finality Jack" for saying in a debate on the Address in 1837 that it was impossible for him to take part in further measures of electoral reform. Punch held that the collapse of the physical force movement, so far from prompting a lethargic acquiescence in the existing régime, ought to stir men of good will to further efforts in order to remove legitimate grounds of discontent:—
THE TENTH OF APRIL TO LORD JOHN RUSSELL
My name, Lord John, is pleasant on many a noble tongue;
I've been bepuffed, bespeechified, bedined, bedrunk, besung;
Conservatism, Finality, Laissez-Faire and Statu Quo,
Are glad to shake hands with "the Tenth," till very proud I grow.
At home, abroad, inside and out, you think you read me true,
But when did ever Whig know man's or people's heart all through?
I am all that you style me, when your praise on me you pour;
All that, my Lord, but take my word, with that I'm something more.
I read your speech, the other night, when Hume, my stout old friend,
Asked of the House, as you did once, the suffrage to extend.
'Twas the use you then made of my name that hath these lines begot—
Hear what the Tenth of April is, and hear what it is not.
I am the friend of Order, but Statu Quo I loathe,
The Law I heed, but still would weed, and trim and guide its growth;
Finality, your present love, unlovely is to me;
That "what is, is," proves not, I wis, that what is, ought to be.
"Content" you think I was, and so, noways for change athirst,
Content men are with second best, in preference to worst:
Content to hold up half a truth, when all truth shakes to fall;
Content with what gives half a loaf, against no bread at all!
But yet no ways content, Lord John, to see some things I see,
As a laughing House of Commons, and a helpless Ministry,
A nation little taught, a Church under-and overpaid,
And prone Respectability in Mammon-service laid.
Great towns o'erbrimming with their scum, great stews of plague and sin;
Toil that should proudly bear itself, in grossness sunk and gin;
Crime stored away to ripen in settlement and gaol;
The rich for wealth, the poor for want, alike forpined and pale.
Then think, my Lord, and you, his friends, who deem those overbold,
That bid you move along the paths you entered on of old,
Think how delay may order with anarchy combine,
And to disaffection's vinegar turn loyalty's strong wine.
Mistake me