POLITICAL REDUCTION.
There have been many examples of Political Reduction both in our last and present ministry. The reduction of postage, so that it paid less than the cost, was an exceedingly business-like act. The reduction of cats'-meat in the storehouses at Plymouth, Woolwich, Portsmouth, and Chatham, from a penny to three farthings a-day, was also an example of legislative wisdom, and proved the maxim, "Sparus at the speketas letouat the bungholeas."
The reduction of paupers' food to "doubly diminutive and beautifully less" than that of the felon, is also "wisdom wonderful;" being a new way of offering a premium upon crime, at about thirty and a third per cent. It is presumed to have occurred with a view to the assistance of Old Bailey practice, and of the Poor Law Commissioners, as it promotes Coroners' inquests and saves coffins.
Rule for the Reduction of Paupers.—Take "an operative," starve him in the streets till he becomes light enough to make a shuttlecock of, then place in his hands an order from an Edmonton magistrate, by way of a feather; bandy him about from parish to parish till you are tired of the game. Let him then fall into the lock-up of the station-house. Keep him sixteen hours in a cold cell without food. Bring him before the Board, put him on the refractory diet, water-gruel, poultice dumplings, and rat roastings. Keep him till he becomes so thin as to lose his shadow, then turn him into the streets to look for a job, with three yards of cord in his pocket, and a direction to the nearest lamp-post, as an intimation of what that job is to be.
A state may be reduced in the same way by nip-cheese patriots. Such "save-alls," when they lop off excrescences, bark the trunk—when they prune redundances, let loose the sap. These "flint-skinners" grind down professions, pare down dignities, sweat sovereigns, purge the commonwealth, scour landlords, skin the army, starve the navy, scrape religion to the backbone, sell the honour of their country for a mess of porridge and its glory for a bag of moonshine; till at last John Bull becomes as lean as a country whipping-post, and would hang himself, only he has not weight enough on him to produce strangulation.
"BLOWED PUFFERY."