"Hast thou any Coffee? No! it is all Chicory, thou art too poor to drink coffee as the brave Parisians drink it, and though the doctors say chicory is good for the health, I hold that it is one of the causes of thy 'Decline.'
"Thou art so poor, too, that lately thou hast been obliged to cut off the skirts of thy officers' jackets, to make trousers, I suppose, for thy miserable soldiers.
THE SICK BRITISH LION AND THE FRENCH QUACK MONKEY.
BRITANNIA PAWNING HER TRIDENT.
JOHN BULL ON HIS LAST LEGS.
"The same symptoms of 'Decline' run through all the bodies of England; legislative, judicial, theatrical, and even royal. Is it not true that thou art reducing the salaries of all her ministers, and it is a great question whether Prince Albert himself will not be put on board wages? Is it not true that the admission at Vauxhall has been reduced to one shilling, because England's haughty nobility can no longer afford to pay four? Is it not true that the Queen has been obliged to pull down a beautiful marble arch in front of her palace in Buckingham, merely to make Carrara water out of it? Is it not true that England's favourite authors, Charles Bulwer, Albert Dickens, and Sir Edward Lytton Smith, have been compelled, by the iron pressure of the times, to publish their works in penny editions, because the public could no longer afford to give 1l. 11s. 6d. for them? Is it not also true that the Omnibuses—those running barometers of the social weather—have brought down their prices to threepence instead of half-a-crown? Is it not likewise true that the market for wives has been so overstocked lately that the City authorities are obliged to enlarge Smithfield; that ices are selling in the streets for one penny, and pineapples are being hawked about at two-pence apiece, because they cannot be sold at any price in the shops; and is it not likewise the truth that Englishmen are now too poor to give a penny to be shaved, and that several shops in the New Cut, and the Seven Vials, are writing up in their windows—I have seen it myself—'A clean shave for one halfpenny'.
"These are solemn, rueful, ugly truths, which show too plainly where lie the seeds of England's decline.