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 POOR MAN'S FRIEND
(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!

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