In regard to Ireland and Home Rule, after the rejection of the Home Rule Bill of 1893 Punch's independent support of the Liberals gave place to a general support of the Unionist policy, tempered by a more or less critical attitude towards Ulster. He cannot be blamed for neglecting to note the obscure and academic beginnings of the Sinn Fein movement, or for failing to forecast that triple alliance of Sinn Fein with the old physical force party and the Labour extremists under Larkin which led to the rebellion of Easter, 1916. The Government expert, who devoted seven years to the neglect of his duties, was sunk in unholy ignorance of all that was going on until the explosion took place. For the rest, Punch became increasingly critical of the demands of Labour and the parochial outlook of its leaders; increasingly antagonistic to the measures passed in satisfaction of those demands. At the same time he devoted more space than ever to satirizing, ridiculing, and castigating the excesses, extravagances and eccentricities of "smart" society, the week-end pleasure hunt of the idle rich, and all the other features which may be summed up in the phrase, "England de Luxe." Pictorially his record reveals perhaps more amusement than disgust at the carnival of frivolity which reached its climax in the years before the war. The note of misgiving is not lacking, but it is sounded less vehemently than in the 'eighties of the last century. In the main Punch's temper may be expressed, to borrow from Bagehot, as an "animated moderation."
To turn from outlines to details, one is confronted in 1893 with Mr. Gladstone's second attempt to solve a problem which Giraldus Cambrensis pronounced insoluble seven centuries ago. Punch's earlier cartoons on the Home Rule Bill are negligible, but the difficulties of the Premier's position are aptly shown in the picture of Gladstone as a knight in armour on a perilous pathway between the Irish Nationalist bog and the "last ditch" of Ulster. The accompanying text, modelled on Bunyan, represents Mr. Gladstone as a Pilgrim relying as much on tactics as the sword. The most genial reference to Ulster is that in which she figures as the Widow Wadman asking Uncle Toby, "Now, Mr. Bull, do you see any 'green' in my eye?" and Uncle Toby protests he "can see nothing whatever of the sort." Otherwise Punch's attitude is unsympathetic, witness the use of the term "Ulsteria" and the epigram on the second reading of the Bill, put, it is true, into the mouth of "A rebellious Rad":—
Butchered—to make an Easter Holiday,
For Orangemen who yearn to have their say!
They've got political delirium tremens.
Orange? Nay, they're sour as unripe lemons!
In the "Essence of Parliament" little is said of the arguments, but we get a glimpse of Lord Randolph Churchill's return to the political arena and echoes of the unbridled loquacity of Mr. Sexton. The cartoons are more instructive, notably that on the introduction of the "Guillotine" by Gladstone, with the G.O.M. as chief operator, Harcourt and Morley as republican soldiers, and Amendments, as heads, falling into a waste-paper basket. The fate of the measure is neatly hit off in the "Little Billee" cartoon; Home Rule as "Little Billee" is about to be massacred by the House of Lords, represented by Salisbury and Hartington as chief villains. "Little Billee" in the legend not only survived but attained high distinction in after life; but it is hard to say whether Punch implied a similar resurrection for the Bill of 1893. But whatever were his views on the merits of Home Rule, Punch was decidedly critical of the Government's naval policy, and when Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley had simultaneously made seemingly irreconcilable speeches on the subject, he adroitly invoked the shade of Cobden, who had, in certain conditions, proclaimed himself a Big Navyite. Punch fortified the argument by a set of verses headed "Rule Britannia" and ending with this stanza:—
Devotion to the needs of home
And claims parochial is not all.