THE
COMIC ALMANACK
For 1851.
"FEMALE EMIGRATION."
Mr. Sidney Herbert has forced upon us a great fact—an uncomfortably great fact—it is thrust into our brain like a fat thirteenth into an omnibus—we are alarmingly overstocked with lovely women; there is a perfect glut of angel purity. Our drawing-rooms, we are told, are choked up with book-muslins; and who would not weep to behold the despairing virgins forced to "polk," "waltz," and "quadrille" together. Glance down the longest of our very long drapers' shops—is it not dreadful to contemplate the two endless rows of bonnets? Even the few hats that you do see in such places belong to swains that have been dragged there with smiles and coaxings—lambs led by garlands to the sacrificial counter.
And what is the consequence? Our youths are pursued by clever mammas, and hemmed in by desperate daughters. Embroidered braces, worked cigar-cases, and beaded pen-wipers are showered down upon them. Still all the ladies cannot be married! Bountiful nature has provided two and a half wives for each Briton; but selfish Parliament denies them more than one; and no Englishman—however sanguine—can expect to be a widower more than twice.
But great times produce great men, and at this sad crisis Mr. Sidney Herbert steps forward to call the attention of the British public to Australia—to Australia, the land of the wifeless!
[An interval of four months is supposed to elapse.