’Faith, Dr. Peel, is your law;
Which, as a remedy
For poverty,
Would recommend the Poor Law.
MATINEE MESMERIQUE
Or, Procédé Humbugaresque.
There is at present in London a gentleman with an enormous beard, who professes the science of animal magnetism, and undertakes to deprive of sense those who come under his hand; but as those who flock to his exhibition have generally left all the sense they possess at home, he finds it difficult to accomplish his purposes. If it is animal magnetism to send another to sleep, what a series of Soirées Mesmériques must take place in the House of Commons during the sitting of Parliament! There is no doubt that Sir Robert Peel is the Lafontaine of political mesmerism—the fountain of quackery—and every pass he makes with his hand over poor John Bull serves to bring him into that state of stupefaction in which he may be most easily victimised. While Lafontaine thrusts pins into his patient, the Premier sends poor John into a swoon, for the purpose of, as it is vulgarly termed, sticking it into him; and as the French quack holds lucifers to the nostril, Peel plays the devil under the very nose of the paralysed sufferer. One resorts to electrics, the other to election tricks, but each has the same object in view—to bring the subject of the operation into a state of unconsciousness. If the Premier would give a Matinée Politique, it would prove a formidable rival to the Soirée Mesmérique of the gentleman in the beard, who seems impressed with the now popular idea, that genius and a clean chin are wholly incompatible.