[5] It is strange that in the full account of Mill's Parliamentary activities given by Sir Leslie Stephen in his article on Mill in the D.N.B. no mention is made of this speech. Nor can I find any reference to it in Bain's Reminiscences.
[6] Mill's actual words were "flogging—a most objectionable punishment in ordinary cases, but a particularly appropriate one for crimes of brutality, especially crimes against women." (Hansard, 3rd series, Vol. cxci., p. 1,054.)
[THE CHURCHES]
The annals of Church and State history were rich in events of prime importance during the years 1857-1874. When one reflects that this short period witnessed the removal of Jewish disabilities, the publication of Essays and Reviews, the much-canvassed appointments of Temple and Stanley, the resounding controversies which arose over Colenso and Jowett, the Mackonochie and Purchas trials, and the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, it will be seen that Punch, in view of the keen interest he had taken from the very first in the relations of Church and State and Society, found an almost embarrassing wealth of material for comment and criticism. On all these subjects he had a good deal to say, and he said it with very much the same mixture of intolerance and common sense, of rationalism and reverence which marked his utterances in earlier years. He professed to represent the majority of English Protestants: he was avowedly Erastian in his maintenance of the supremacy of the Law Courts in all cases; he was the unrelenting enemy of Extreme Ritual, the Confessional, and any attempts to revive monasticism; and on occasion he was ready to bang the "No Popery" drum as loudly as ever.
When Béranger died in 1857, his burial prompted a tribute in verse which begins with the lines:—
Ah Béranger, you brave old singer,
Of all the things you hated worst,
That felt your lash's lustiest stinger