Punch , however, had no intention of crossing the floor of the House. The Conservative opposition to the Franchise Bill rekindled his Liberalism. Lord Salisbury's attitude in particular excited his hostility. He figures in verse as "The Losing Leader"
(after Browning), and in a cartoon as the bell-wether followed into the pit by a flock of coroneted sheep. It was "no Curtius leap, but mutton madness," and the hotheads are compared to the Gadarene swine. Punch heaped laboured ridicule on the great Hyde Park Demonstration, printed burlesque advertisements suggesting employment for peers after the abolition of the House of Lords, and indulged in prophetic forecasts of "What it may come to."
The Franchise BillStandard Punch Punch
Newly elected Parliament meets for the first time, and commences a campaign of active legislative reform by abolishing the Speaker.Punch PunchThe "Payment of Members Bill," involving a State income of £2,000 a year, the right to a stall at West End Theatres on first nights, family railway tourist-tickets during the summer season, and free dining for self and friend at the Holborn Restaurant while Parliament is in Session, carried without a division.
The "Payment of Members Bill," being thrown out by the Peers, the House of Lords is abolished by a short comprehensive Act, framed for the purpose, in one sitting.
Much aristocratic distress prevails towards the end of the month, and gangs of hungry Peers infesting the public thoroughfares are prosecuted daily by the Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, and ultimately shipped to a Coral Island in the Pacific.
The Tragedy of KhartoumPunch's
Other pens were busy over this episode, which inspired perhaps the most scarifying epigram of our times:
Mrs. Gummidge-Gladstone: "I ain't what I could wish myself to be. My troubles has made me contrairy. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrairy. I make the house uncomfortable. I don't wonder at it!!!"
John Peggotty-Bull (deeply sympathizing aside ): "She's been thinking of the old 'un!" David Copperfield.
The days of the Gladstone administration were numbered, and the motion in favour of Proportional Representation excited but a languid and academic interest. Punch thought the system far too complicated, and sought to reduce it to absurdity by a practical illustration. He was much more serious in his resentment at the hectoring attitude of Bismarck à propos of a recent speech of the Imperial Chancellor. In "Lecturing a Lecturer a Friendly Tip to the Teuton Titan," he showed Bismarck standing in a truculent pose before a map of Europe while Punch looks on in amusement. The point of the accompanying verses is that Britain was not to be scared or scolded into submission: