Sans beer, sans beef, sans tea, sans everything.
Railway titles, a railway peerage and Parliament are foreshadowed, with King Hudson, "the monarch of all they 'survey,'" installed in his palace at Hampton Court. The relations of John Bull—on whom "the sweet simplicity of the three per cents." had begun to pall—with humbugging promoters is hit off in the stanza:—
Said John, "Your plan my mind contents,
I'm sick and tired of Three per Cents.;
And don't get enough by my paltry rents"—
So he got hooked in by the railway "gents."
KING HUDSON'S LEVÉE
Rules for Railways
In his anti-Puseyite zeal Punch mendaciously declares that a railway from Oxford to Rome has been projected with the Pope's approval. In fact, any stick was good enough to beat the speculators with. "Locksley Hall" is parodied as "Capel Court," and the rush to deposit plans at the Board of Trade, when special trains were chartered by rival promoters, is described in humorous detail in a Punch ballad. Padded suits are suggested in 1846 as a protection against railway accidents, but the best summary—with all its exaggerations—of the discomforts of railway travelling in the mid 'forties is to be found in the "Rules and Regulations for Railways":—