Here the verses drive home the argumentum ad pocketum in the crudest way. Cousin Jonathan is told not to be an ass, or "bid Mrs. Britannia stop ruling the wave":
"Distressed Millionaires"Punch Manchester Guardian
Travel : A gentleman, whose son, aged 17, is thrown out of occupation by the Cotton Famine, would be glad to meet with one or two other young gentlemen to accompany his son on a Tour, for five or six months, in the Mediterranean or elsewhere.PunchAddress F. 127 at the Printers.
mill-owners, and devolve on the squires and farmers and the British public the duty of rescuing their unemployed workpeople from starvation."
When a ship was sent to Liverpool bearing the contributions of the United States to the relief of Lancashire in February, 1863, Punch welcomed the gift without reserve, as linking the two worlds anew by the chain of fraternal goodwill. But a very different spirit is shown in his acid comments on the debate in the House of Commons initiated by W. E. Forster, who attacked the Government for not interfering to prevent ships of war being supplied by our builders to the Confederates, and said that we incurred great danger of war. The facts and the sequel fully justified Forster's protest, but Punch was not content with backing up Palmerston's defence of the Government, and treated with contempt and ridicule Bright's insistence on the sympathy of the working classes with the North:
Here it may be mentioned that Mr. Bright alluded in his speech to a meeting held the day before at the St. James's Hall, where he had been in the chair, and a crowded assembly of workmen testified the utmost sympathy with the North. This meeting is grandiloquently described by the Yankee organ here, but shall describe itself for Mr. Punch's readers. It was chiefly composed of Trade Union men, and when a person who had chosen to be free and act for himself ventured to speak, although on the same side as the other orators, these lovers of liberty interrupted him with cries of "He's not a Society man!" Mr. Bright made a fervid and eloquent speech in favour of the North, and a shoemaker came next, who abused Mr. Punch , said "that a monster in human shape had been guest of the Lord Mayor," and that "the Devil, in the shape of The Times newspaper, was carrying out an infernal purpose." A joiner then called Lord Palmerston a liar, and a Professor Beestley, or some such name, attacked the "wicked press," meaning the respectable journals. An address to Mr. Lincoln was agreed to, assailing the "infamous Times ," the "arrogant aristocracy," the "diabolical" South, our "unscrupulous moneyocracy," and the "infamous rebellion," and terminating with some gushing bosh about the vivifying Sun of Liberty. This document is penned in New York Herald style, and probably owes its origin to Yankee inspiration. To this kind of meeting, and this kind of language, Mr. Bright referred, complacently, in the House of Commons. The North must be in a bad way when such allies are coveted.PunchLibelling Lincoln
spread-eagling of the northern Press, as when the New York Herald declared that:
They (the American people) know that when this rebellion began the aristocrats of England took advantage of the chance to destroy us, and joined heart and hand with the slaveholding rebels. They know that this rebellion was born in Exeter Hall, nurtured by the English aristocracy, armed from English arsenals, and supported by English sympathy and assistance.Punch Herald Punch's
As for the British working men, though Punch had undoubtedly endeavoured to discount the strength of the tide of feeling which continued to run strongly against the slave power, in spite of the terrible suffering brought about by the blockade, he quoted with approval Lord Palmerston's formidable and damaging indictment of the manufacturers in the House of Commons on July 30:
"We know," he said, "that in the county most fortunes have been made by the manufacturers. I do not agree with the Hon. Member for Stockport that it has all been invested in the mills. On the contrary they have accumulated much more than their mills could have cost. There are enormous capitalists in the county, some of whom, I am sorry to say, though they have starving populations at their gates, and anticipate worse distress as coming, have actually, for the sake of profit, sold and sent out of the country the cotton which they ought to have used for the employment of the people. I say, why are these people to be exempt, and not to be made to contribute to the distress which they see around them?"