We think it would be an excellent plan for respectable electors to make members pledge themselves to vote for the heavy taxation of various articles in which Gents chiefly delight. In this tariff we would have blue stocks; large breast-pins; snaffle coat-studs; curled hair; collar-galled hacks; Spanish dances; Cellarius waltzes; Caledonian quadrilles; lithographed beauties, plain and coloured; cheap cigars; large pattern trowsers; gay under-waistcoats or “vests;” thick sticks; short canes; walking-whips; and boxes of omnibuses, as distinguished from omnibus boxes. If the Gents could not enjoy these things without paying heavy prices for them they would go without; for a great effect at a small outlay is the main intention of all their follies.

And we also think it might be serviceable towards the great end of putting Gents out altogether, when any one chances to say, “I know a Gent,” to exclaim immediately either “You know a what?” in accents of horror, or “You look as if you did!” in a tone of contempt, to bring him to a sense of his miserable position—in whichever way you think will best work upon his feelings.

Doudney, Moses, Prew, and Hyams! patrons as ye are of literature generally, and poets especially! by whose influence the taste of the Gents is in some measure guided, help us to effect some little reform! Do not, we beseech you, allow your emblazoned window-tickets to lead this wretched race into such strange ideas respecting the “fashions” as they are wont to indulge in. Abolish all those little pasteboard scutcheons which point out your gaudy fabrics as “Novel,” “The Style,” “Splendid,” “The Thing,” “Parisian,” and the like. Cut their waistcoats, in charity, as if you intended them for gentlemen instead of Gents. Reform your own bills, and appeal not to the sympathies with such wild innovations: and persuade the literary Gent who writes those charming little brochures about your establishments—whispered to be the light contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine—which are presented gratuitously with the periodicals, to lead the minds of the Gents into another channel. Let them no longer imagine that the usual method of dressing of an acknowledged leader of fashion—the gentleman of the greatest taste in England—is in a puckered six-and-threepenny blouse with braid round the pockets (for such is the garment that bears his name), a rainbow-tinted stock, drugget-pattern trowsers, and nine-and-sixpenny broad-brimmed hats. Do this, and send all your present stock to America.

Editors of Sporting Papers! you are renowned for obliging courtesy: assist the good work with your able pens, by never allowing the term “Sporting Gent” to appear in your columns, whether he undertakes to drive a pony to death, match his dog to be torn to pieces last in a struggle, or advance a pecuniary inducement for two savages to pummel each other’s heads to jelly. Did you ever see a “Sporting Gent?” You must have done so; and you have noted his coarse hands, his flattened fingers, and dubby nails; his common green coat, his slang handkerchief, and his low hat: his dreary conversation entirely confined to wiredrawn accounts of wagers he has won, and matches he can make for any thing. Never give him a chance of attaining publicity, and he will go out and disappear altogether, leaving the coast clear for gentlemen.

We are not altogether without a hope that, by strong and energetic measures, the Gents may be put down—this would be a real “improved condition of the people” much to be desired. A Court of Propriety might be established at which Gents could be convicted of misdemeanors against what is usually considered comme-il-faut. And punishments might be awarded proportionate to the nature of the offence. For a heavy one a Gent might be transported for fourteen days into good society, where he would be especially wretched; for a light one he might enter into heavy recognizances not to smoke cigars on omnibuses or steamers, not to wear any thing but quiet colours, not to say he knew actresses, and not to whistle when he entered a tavern, or, with his fellows, laugh loudly at nothing, when ensconced in his box there, for any time not exceeding the same period. A Court of Requests would be of no use; for it is of little avail requesting the Gents to do any thing. Compulsion alone would reform them.

We trust the day will come—albeit we feel it will not be in our time—when the Gent will be an extinct species; his “effigies,” as the old illustrated books have it, being alone preserved in museums. And then this treatise may be regarded as those zoological papers are now which treat of the Dodo: and the hieroglyphics of coaches and horses, pheasants, foxes’ heads, and sporting dogs found on the huge white buttons of his wrapper, will be regarded with as much curiosity, and possibly will give rise to as much discussion and investigation as the ibises and scarabæi in the Egyptian Room of the British Museum. We hope it may be so.

VIZETELLY BROTHERS AND CO. PRINTERS AND ENGRAVERS, FLEET STREET