In these sixty-nine volumes of Punch there is much of the history of our time which words alone could not have preserved. We can trace in them the progress of ideas, of measures, and of men. The changes in public feeling are exhibited which enabled Cobden and Peel to strike from British industry the gilt fetters of protection, for Punch is only another name for Public Opinion. These pictures have a particular interest for us, since we are to travel the same road in due time, and thus, at length, give Great Britain a rival in the markets of the world. Nothing could be better than Mr. Leech's picture showing Sir Robert Peel as the "Deaf Postilion." In a debate on the Corn Laws he had said, "I shall still pursue steadily that course which my conscience tells me I should take; let you and those opposite pursue what course you think right." The picture shows us a post-chaise, the body of which has become detached from the fore-wheels—a mishap which the deaf postilion does not discover, but goes trotting along as though his horses were still drawing the load. The chaise, named Protection, is occupied by Tory lords, who shout in vain to the deaf postilion. Again, we have Disraeli as a viper biting the file, Sir Robert. Leech continued his effective support of the movement until the victory was won, when he designed a monument to the victor, consisting of a pyramid of large cheap loaves of bread crowned by the name of Peel.
The Puseyite imbecility was as effectively satirized by Leech in 1849 as the ritualistic imitation has recently been by Tenniel. American slavery came in for just rebuke. As a retort to "some bunkum" in the American press in 1848, Mr. Leech drew a picture of Liberty lashing a negro, while Jonathan, with rifle on his arm, cigar in his mouth, and bottle at his side, says, "Oh, ain't we a deal better than other folks! I guess we're a most a splendid example to them thunderin' old monarchies." The language is wrong, of course; no American ever said "a deal better." English attempts at American slang are always incorrect. But the satire was deserved. Leech was far from sparing his own country. Some readers must remember the pair of pictures by Leech, in 1849, entitled "Pin-money" and "Needle-money," one exhibiting a young lady's boudoir filled with luxurious and costly objects, and the other a poor needle-woman in her garret of desolation, sewing by the light of a solitary candle upon a shirt for which she is to receive three half-pence. In a similar spirit was conceived a picture presenting two objects often seen in agricultural fairs in England—a "Prize Peasant" and a "Prize Pig:" the first rewarded for sixty years of virtuous toil by a prize of two guineas, the owner of the fat pig being recompensed by an award of three guineas.
Toward Louis Napoleon Punch gradually relented. At first Mr. Leech gave just and strong expression to the world's contempt for that unparalleled charlatan; but as he became powerful, and seemed to be useful to Great Britain, Punch treated him with an approach to respect. A similar change toward Mr. Disraeli is observable. Seldom during the first fifteen years of his public life was he presented in a favorable light. Upon his retirement from office in 1853, Leech satirized his malevolent attacks upon the new ministry very happily by a picture in which he appears as a crossing-sweeper spattering mud upon Lord Russell and his colleagues. "Won't give me any thing, won't you?" says the sweeper: "then take that!" Nor did the admirable Leech fail to mark the public sense of Disraeli's silence during the long debates upon the bill giving to English Jews some of the rights of citizenship. In his whole public career there is nothing harder to forgive than that ignoble and unnecessary abstinence. During the last few years Mr. Disraeli has won by sheer persistence a certain solidity of position in English politics, and Punch pays him the respect due to a person who represents a powerful and patriotic party.
One quality of the Punch caricatures is worthy of particular regard: they are rarely severe, and never scurrilous. The men for whom Mr. Leech entertained an antipathy, such as O'Connell, O'Brien, Brougham, and others, were usually treated in a manner that could not have painfully wounded their self-love. We observe even in the more incisive works of Gillray a certain boisterous good-humor that often made their satire amusing to the men satirized. Mr. Rush, American minister in London in 1818, describes a dinner party at Mr. Canning's, at which the minister exhibited to his guests albums and scrap-books of caricature in which he was himself very freely handled. Fox and Burke, we are told, visited the shop where Gillray's caricatures were sold, and while buying the last hit at themselves would bandy jests with Mrs. Humphrey, the publisher. Burke winced a little under the lash, but the robuster and larger Fox was rarely disturbed, and behaved in the shop with such winning courtesy that Mrs. Humphrey pronounced him the peerless model of a gentleman. Punch, likewise, does not appear to irritate the men whom he caricatures. Lord Brougham used to laugh at the exceedingly ugly countenance given him by Leech, and to say that the artist, unable to hit his likeness, was obliged to designate him by his checked trousers. Lord Russell, as we see, does not object to Leech's delineations; and Palmerston, long a favorite with the Punch artists, may well have been content with their handsome treatment of him.
During the last fifteen years Mr. Tenniel has oftenest supplied the political cartoon of Punch. His range is not so wide as that of Leech, but within his range he is powerful indeed. He has produced some pictures which for breadth, strength, aptness, good feeling, and finish have rarely been equaled in their kind. He gives us sometimes such an impression of his power as we fancy Michael Angelo might have done if he had amused himself by drawings reflecting upon the politics of his time. If, as the Quarterly Review lately remarked, Tenniel's pictures are often something less than caricature, being wanting in the exuberant humor of his predecessors, we can also say that they are frequently much more than caricature. Mr. Tenniel was an artist of repute, and had furnished a cartoon for the Westminster Parliament-house before he became identified with Punch.
"Obstructives." (John Tenniel, 1870.)
Mr. Punch (to Bull A 1). "Yes, it's all very well to say 'Go to school!' How are they to go to school with those people quarreling in the door-way? Why don't you make 'em 'move on?'"