PUNCH.—No, but they’ll give them cheap drink. They’ll throw open the Thames for the use of the temperance societies.
MANAGER.—But if we don’t have cheap corn, our trade must be destroyed, our factories will be closed, and our mills left idle.
PUNCH.—There you’re wrong. Our tread-mills will be in constant work; and, though our factories should be empty, our prisons will be quite full.
MANAGER.—That’s all very well, Mr. Punch; but the people will grumble a leetle if you starve them.
PUNCH.—Ay, hang them, so they will; the populace have no idea of being grateful for benefits. Talk of starvation! Pooh!—I’ve studied political economy in a workhouse, and I know what it means. They’ve got a fine plan in those workhouses for feeding the poor devils. They do it on the homoeopathic system, by administering to them oatmeal porridge in infinitessimal doses; but some of the paupers have such proud stomachs that they object to the diet, and actually die through spite and villany. Oh! ’tis a dreadful world for ingratitude! But never mind—Send round the hat.
MANAGER.—What is the meaning of the sliding scale, Mr. Punch?
PUNCH.—It means—when a man has got nothing for breakfast, he may slide his breakfast into his lunch; then, if he has got nothing for lunch, he may slide that into his dinner; and if he labours under the same difficulties with respect to the dinner, he may slide all three meals into his supper.
MANAGER.—But if the man has got no supper?
PUNCH.—Then let him wish he may get it.
MANAGER.—Oh! that’s your sliding scale?