The Suez CanalPunch
The Lords had a discussion about the Canal of the Future, that is to say, the impossible trench which M. Lesseps pretends to think he can cut through the Isthmus of Suez. The Government opinion upon the subject is, that if the Canal could be made, we ought not, for political reasons, to allow it, but that inasmuch as the Canal cannot be cut, the subject may, and the wise course is to let the speculators ruin themselves and diddle the Pacha. This seems straightforward and benevolent enough.Punch Punch
Punch declined it both for him and his next brother, Prince Arthur (the Duke of Connaught). "Let the present King (Otho) mind his own business better," Punch advises. The Greek Crown, it is derisively added, was not worth five bob. The offer, however, was not definitely and officially refused until the following year.
The Trent affair was settled, but throughout 1862 Punch exchanged his impartial unfriendliness to both antagonists for a distinct bias against the North and Lincoln. For the moment his distrust of Louis Napoleon was merged in disapproval of the Empress Eugénie for her alleged interference in politics and support of the Papal pretensions. The visit of the Japanese ambassadors in the summer inspired imaginary dispatches, in which allusion is made to their interest in English arsenals and factories. Punch , by this time, had at any rate learned not to depict them as negroes, as he had done only a few years earlier. The police-ridden condition of Poland excites his indignation; but he is careful to disclaim sympathy with sentimental "National" movements, maintaining much the same view as that expressed in his lines on "The Nonsense of the Nationalities" three years before:
Colonel Bull: "I am."
'Coon: "Don't fire I'll come down."
The cultivation of the Welsh vernacular provoked Punch's outspoken hostility, as we notice elsewhere. And it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that Punch's strong sympathy with Poland in 1863 was in part due to the fact that Russia, her oppressor, was the only Continental nation friendly to the North in the American war. The exploits of the Alabama only tended to enhance English sympathy with the South, and Mrs. Beecher Stowe's letter, in which she complained that England was throwing her weight into the scale on the slave-owners' side, was not favourably received; while Punch considered it "bad form" for Americans in London to celebrate Independence Day. It is almost needless to say that Louis Napoleon's suggestion for a Congress at Paris was treated with scant courtesy: any suggestion from that quarter was sure to be regarded as suspect.
But the eyes of England and of Europe were diverted from the great struggle in America, already at its height, by events nearer home. The Fenian trouble had already begun in Ireland in 1863; the Schleswig-Holstein controversy was working steadily up to the arbitrament of war. It was of this "question" that Palmerston said that only three men in Europe ever understood it, of whom one (the Prince Consort) was dead; another (a Danish statesman) was mad, and the third (he himself) had forgotten it. Palmerston was inclined to be "interventionist," but was restrained by his colleagues and the influence of the Queen. Punch somewhat reluctantly acquiesced in the view that non-intervention in foreign disputes was the best policy, but his comments with pen and pencil reflect the extreme unpopularity of Prussia. In May appeared the cartoon in which Punch is shown presenting Prussia with the Order of "St. Gibbet." In the same month he bitterly protested against the bestowal of the Order of the Black Eagle on Prince Alfred by the King of Prussia:
scale of contributions to be levied on Danish landlords, is quoted in the issue of June 4 as a villainous edict, worthy of cut-throats and felons. Earlier in the year Punch had fallen heavily on Professor Max-Müller for his letter, "A German Plea for Germans," in The Times . The Prussians and Austrians were depicted, accurately enough in view of the sequel, as bandits quarrelling over their spoil, and this free criticism was bitterly resented throughout Germany. When Müller was tried and executed for the murder of Mr. Briggs in the autumn of this year, the judge was accused of anti-Prussian bias. Meanwhile Punch found little worthy of comment in the American war beyond the allegations of malingering among Federal troops, and the report that Irishmen were induced to emigrate, with promises of help, in order to furnish recruits for the Northern army.