Nascent ImperialismPunch
Mr. Punch is pleased to see that a decoration has been given by the Queen to the Finance Minister of Victoria. Victoria is one of the Australian colonies, it is at the southern extremity of the continent, Melbourne is the capital, and the inhabitants are far in advance of England in regard to civilization for instance, they have compulsory education. The Hon. George Vernon came over on a mission to our Government. Victoria wants an armour-plated ship, for which she will partly pay, and a training ship, and Sir John Pakington has assented. The Minister, for his various services to the colony, has received the Bath Cross. Should it not have been the Victoria Cross? This little goak is the bit of sugar with which Mr. Punch rewards his readers for learning more than most English people know about one of our noblest colonies. If his readers are good, they shall have another colonial lesson some day. For we have other colonies besides Victoria.
lesson in geography had been suggested earlier in the year by the final success of the Great Eastern in laying the cable, a success due as much to the enterprise of Cyrus Field, the American capitalist, as to the genius of Brunel.
In 1867 there was a further recrudescence of Fenianism, and the "physical force" men extended their operations to England. For this was the year of the sinister attempt to blow up Clerkenwell prison, and the rescue of Fenians from the prison van in Manchester, in which a police-sergeant was shot, with, as a consequence, the execution of the "Manchester Martyrs," funeral processions and celebrations, the echoes of which have reverberated down to these days.
The Reform League expressed sympathy with the Fenians, and an English lady of rank associated herself with their cause; but Punch regarded such support with unqualified contempt and even abhorrence. Real military operations on a modest scale were conducted by England in one of her small wars that against the recalcitrant King of Abyssinia and an autumn session was held to vote supplies. It was suggested that Sir Robert Napier, who commanded the expedition, was not at first adequately rewarded, but he was raised to the peerage in the following year as Lord Napier of Magdala. There seems to have been less divergence of opinion over the protest that the cost of the war was entirely borne by income-tax payers. Disraeli having succeeded Lord Derby as Premier, and Mr. Ward Hunt having gone to the Exchequer, Punch contented himself with observing, à propos of the new Budget, that the money for the deficit of upwards of a million and a half "is, of course, to be taken from the Middle Class, which never defends itself," and returned to the charge on May 9 in his lines on "The Great Untaxed in their Glory":
French and German AmbitionsPunch Punch
for his wife, who was created Viscountess Beaconsfield, inspired a graceful tribute from his old critic Punch . Parliament, before the prorogation in July, had been mainly occupied with the battle over Gladstone's Irish Church resolutions, which brought about the Government's downfall. It is worthy of note that in 1868 it was the Militarism of France, not of Germany, that excited Punch's misgivings and animosities, to the extent of his describing the Emperor's proposed Army Loan of 440 million francs as a measure to establish a reign of "terror and preponderance." A map, which was said to have been published by order of the Emperor, illustrating French ambitions, gravely exercised Punch later in a year which witnessed the Revolution in Spain and the flight of the notorious Queen Isabella, events which awakened little sympathy or interest in England. Yet the eviction of Isabella opened the door to the Hohenzollern candidature for the throne of Spain, the proximate cause of the war of 1870. But the seeds of conflict lay deeper in the relentless diplomacy of Bismarck, bound sooner or later to manœuvre Napoleon III into a position from which he could not escape without resort to the arbitrament of war. In 1869 the celebration of the centenary of Napoleon I and the proposed inauguration of a Constitutional régime furnished Punch with material for some plain-spoken advice to Napoleon's successor and namesake. Distrust of Louis Napoleon still dominated Punch's outlook on foreign politics and clouded his vision. Strange to say the growth of the Prussian fleet is not only praised, but welcomed: