We believe it is not generally known that Sir PETER LAURIE is as profound an orientalist as perhaps any Rabbi dwelling in Whitechapel. Sir PETER, whilst recently searching the Mansion House library,—which has been greatly enriched by eastern manuscripts, the presents of the late Sir WILLIAM CURTIS, Sir CLAUDIUS HUNTER, and the venerable Turk who is Wont to sell rhubarb in Cheapside, and supplied dinner-pills to the Court of Aldermen,—Sir PETER, be it understood, lighted upon a rare work on the Mogul Country, in which it is stated that on every birth-day of the Great Mogul, his Magnificence is duly weighed in scales against so much gold and silver—his precise weight in the precious metals being expended on provisions for the poor.
Was there ever a happier device to make a nation interested in the greatness of their sovereign? The fatter the king, the fuller his people! With this custom naturalised among us, what a blessing would have been the corpulency of GEORGE THE FOURTH! How the royal haunches, the royal abdomen, would have had the loyal aspirations of the poor and hungry! The national anthem would have had an additional verse in thanksgiving for royal flesh; and in our orisons said in churches, we should not only have prayed for the increasing years of our “most religious King,” but for his increasing fat!
It is however useless to regret forgotten advantages; let us, on the contrary, with new alacrity, avail ourselves of a present good.
Our illumination on the christening of the Prince of Wales—we at once, and in the most liberal manner, give the child his title—has been generally scouted, save and except by a few public-spirited oil and tallow-merchants. It has been thought better to give away legs of mutton on the occasion, than to waste any of the sheep in candles. This proposition—it is known—has our heartiest concurrence. Here, however, comes in the wisdom of our dear Sir Peter. He, taking the hint from the Mogul Country, proposes that the Prince of Wales should be weighed in scales—weighed, naked as he was born, without the purple velvet and ermine robe in which his Highness is ordinarily shown in, not that Sir PETER would sink that “as offal”—against his royal weight in beef and pudding; the said beef and pudding to be distributed to every poor family (if the family count a certain number of mouths, his Royal Highness to be weighed twice or thrice, as it may be) to celebrate the day on which his Royal Highness shall enter the pale of the Christian Church.
We have all heard what a remarkably fine child his Royal Babyhood is; but would not this distribution of beef and pudding convince the country of the fact? How folks would rejoice at the chubbiness of the Prince, when they saw a evidence of his bare dimensions smoking on their table! How their hearts would leap up at his fat, when they beheld it typified upon their platters! How they would be gladdened by prize royalty, while their mouths watered at prize beef! And how, with all their admiration of the exceeding lustihood of the Prince of Wales,—how, from the very depths of their stomachs, would they wish His Royal Highness twice as big!
Is not this a way to disarm Chartism of its sword and pike, making even O’CONNOR, VINCENT, and PINKETHLIE, throw away their weapons for a knife and fork? Is not this the way to make the weight of royalty easy—oh, most easy!—to a burthened people? The beef-and-pudding representatives of His Royal Highness, preaching upon every poor man’s table, would carry the consolations of loyalty to every poor man’s stomach. When the children of the needy lisped “plum pudding,” would they not think of the Prince?
(Now, then, our readers know the obligation of the country to Sir PETER LAURIE—an obligation which we are happy to state will be duly acknowledged by the Common Council, that grateful body having already petitioned the Government for the waste leaden pipes preserved from the fire at the Tower, that a statue of Sir Peter may be cast from the metal, and placed in some convenient nook of the Mansion-House, where the Lord Mayor for the time being may, it is hoped, behold it at least once a-day.)
This happy suggestion of Sir PETER’S may, however, be followed up with the best national effect. Christmas is fast Approaching: let the fashion set by the Prince of Wales be followed by all public bodies—by all individuals “blessed with aught to give.” Let the physical weight of all corporations—all private benefactors of the poor, be distributed in eatables to the indigent and famishing. When the Alderman, with “three fingers on the ribs” gives his weight in geese or turkeys to the poor of his ward, he returns the most pertinent thanks-giving to providence, that has put money in his pocket and flesh upon his bones. The poor may have an unexpected cause to bless the venison and turtle that have fattened his bowels, seeing that they are made the depositories of their weight.
This standard of Christmas benefactions may admit of very curious illustration. For instance, we would not tie the noble and the aristocratic to any particular kind of viands, but would allow them to illustrate their self-value of the “porcelain of all human clay” by the richness and rarity of their subscriptions. Whilst a SIBTHORP, with a fine sense of humility, might be permitted to give his weight in calves’ or sheeps’ heads (be it understood we must have the whole weight of the Colonel, for if we were to sink his offal, what in the name of veal would remain?), a Duke of WELLINGTON should be allowed to weight against nothing less than the fattest venison and the finest turtle. As the Duke, too, is rather a light weight, we should be glad if he would condescend to take a Paisley weaver or two in the scale with him, to make his subscription of eatables the more worthy of acceptance. All the members of the present Cabinet would of course be weighed against loaves and fishes (on the present occasion we would accept nothing under the very finest wheaten bread and the very best of turbot), whilst a LAURIE, who has worked such a reform in cut-throats, should be weighed out to his ward in the most select stickings of beef.
All we propose to ourselves in these our weekly essays is, to give brief suggestions for the better government of the world, and for the bringing about the millennium, which—when we are given away gratis in the streets—may be considered to have arrived. Hence, we cannot follow put through all its natural ramifications the benevolent proposition here laid down. We trust, however, we have done enough. It is not necessary that we should particularise all public men, tying them to be weighed against specific viands: no, our readers will at once recognise the existence of the parties, and at once acknowledge their fittest offerings. It may happen that a peer might very properly be weighed against shin of beef, and a Christian bishop be popped in the scale against a sack of perriwinkles; it remains, however, with LONDONDERRY or EXETER to be weighed if they will against golden pheasants and birds of paradise.