SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE
Dick: "I've chose my Three Acres—next to the Parson's. I mean to dig and grow 'Taters. Where 'ave you chose yours?"
Harry: "I ain't chose no Land. I shan't grow no 'Taters. I shall take your 'Taters!"
Yet in the autumn of 1885, when Lord Carnarvon was Viceroy, Punch developed a strong distrust of the conciliatory policy of the Conservatives. In one cartoon he shows Captain Moonlight masked and armed at an open door, the bar of the Crimes Act having been removed. In October he wrote, "when Tyranny alone is free where is the safety—save for slaves." In another cartoon he showed the National League as the Irish Vampire, hovering over Hibernia in her uneasy sleep, and bade her awake and banish the hideous monster that was sapping her strength. Mr. Punch's "Political Address," issued shortly before the resignation of the Salisbury Cabinet, claimed that he was the only real Independent Candidate, the nominee of no party, section, or sect; bound to no programme, but "all for the four P's—Principle, Progress, Patriotism and Peace"—in fine, "whichever Party he returned to office, Mr. Punch, the non-partisan Member for Everywhere, will be in power." The new cry of "Three Acres and a Cow" raised at the close of 1885 left him cold, witness Du Maurier's "Sauce for the Goose." The verses in the same number on "New Words and Old Songs" imply that it was a mere vote-catching device, and at the same time mock at the cadging tactics of the Knights and Dames of the Primrose League founded in 1884.
Home Rule Rejected
On the resignation of the Salisbury Cabinet, Mr. Gladstone returned to power with Mr. Morley as Chief Secretary for Ireland. The story of his conversion to Home Rule, his failure to convert his colleagues, the split in the Cabinet and the introduction and rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1886 is well told in the series of cartoons which begin with "At the Cross Roads" in February. There Gladstone is shown hesitating between Land Purchase and Home Rule, while Chamberlain as the cowboy advises the former. In "The Thanes fly from me" we see Gladstone as Macbeth asking Morley (Seyton) to give him his armour: "This push will cheer me ever or disseat me now." The Home Rule Bill is typified as the "Divided Skirt." Gladstone as the Grand Old Man Milliner is trying in vain to reconcile Britannia to her new dress. The sequel is shown in the "Actæon" cartoon in which Gladstone is pulled down by his own hounds—Chamberlain, Hartington, Goschen—and in the adaptation of Meissonier's "Retreat from Moscow," where Gladstone figures as the defeated Napoleon. It is rather curious, by the way, to note that during the debates Punch, in his "Essence of Parliament," describes Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Labouchere as the "two drolls of the House" at Question time.
THE "DIVIDED SKIRT"
Grand Old Man-Milliner (persuasively): "Fits beautifully, Madam! A little alteration here and there!"