I should take just the opposite line
To that Queen, Lords, and Commons are taking.
This was the first time that Karl Marx was mentioned in Punch. As for Odger, who is alluded to in the same verses, it may be recalled that at a meeting at Leicester held in this autumn he was credited with the statement that "me and my colleagues have resolved that the Prince of Wales shall never ascend the throne."
Anti-Monarchical Sentiment
There was undoubtedly a strong wave of anti-monarchical sentiment in England in 1871. It was not confined to agitators or extremists, but found utterance in organs which represented moderate opinion. Lord Morley in his Life of Gladstone quotes from the Pall Mall Gazette of September 29, 1871, to illustrate the depth and wide range of this discontent. He might very well have quoted Punch also as documentary evidence. The Political History of England sums up the grounds of this resentment among friendly critics not unfairly: "Ten years' seclusion from social activity and public duty seemed an excessive indulgence in the luxury of sorrow." The sympathy stirred by the Queen's illness in September, 1871, marked the beginning of a reaction; the acute anxiety "aroused by the dangerous illness of the Prince of Wales in the following December, and the subsequent rejoicings on his recovery, did much to improve the relations between Crown and people"; and Punch quotes the Queen's message of thanks to the nation as the most "acceptable Christmas gift which could have been bestowed on a loyal and affectionate people." In the verses on the Thanksgiving Service in St. Paul's on February 27 he is at pains to meet the sneers of those who only saw:—
A Queen, and Prince and Princess, and their Court,
And coaches passing to St. Paul's to prayer;
To settle scores with Heaven in stately sort:—
A Show for once! and our shows are so rare.
But the defensive tone is soon dropped for one of congratulation: