If on the night of the 24th of August—the memorable night on which this heartless insult was thrown in the idle teeth of famishing thousands—the ghosts of the victims of the Corn Laws,—the spectres of the wretches who had been ground out of life by the infamy of Tory taxation, could have been permitted to lift the bed-curtains of Apsley-House,—his Grace the Duke of Wellington would have been scared by even a greater majority than ultimately awaits his fellowship in the present Cabinet. Still we can only visit upon the Duke the censure of ignorance. “He knows not what he says.” If it be his belief that England suffers only because she is drunken and idle, he knows no more of England than the Icelander in his sledge: if, on the other hand, he used the libel as a party warfare, he is still one of the “old set,”—and his “crowning carnage, Waterloo,” with all its greatness, is but a poor set-off against the more lasting iniquities which he would visit upon his fellow-men. Anyhow, he cannot—he must not—escape from his opinion; we will nail him to it, as we would nail a weasel to a barn-door; “if Englishmen want competence, they must be drunken—they must be idle.” Gentlemen Tories, shuffle the cards as you will, the Duke of Wellington either lacks principle or brains.
Next week we will speak of the Whigs; of the good they have done—of the good they have, with an instinct towards aristocracy—most foolishly, most traitorously, missed.
Q.
PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS—No. IX.
THE ROYAL RED RIDING HOOD,
AND THE MINISTERIAL WOLF.