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BRADBURY & EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C.

LONDON

BRADBURY AND LVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

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SINCE the days of the illustrious ANDREW MARVELL, MR. PUNCH is the first paid M.P.-that is, Member for PUNCH-who, being paid, has sedulously given all his heart and all his soul to the interests of his many thousands of Constituents. To be sure, the salary of MR. PUNCH as M.P. is but small-an inconsiderable threepence per head per week ;-but it is the principle enshrined in that unassuming threepence that makes the wages a glory and an honour. Not the money, but the sentiment of the money; not the flower, but the odour that is the soul of the flower.

At this time, when some thousand English gentlemen-we will say a thousand-are standing before their country; indeed, not so much standing as kneeling before it, with their right hands on their waistcoats, and their left upraised, protesting that they have no such earthly hope as the hope that shall carry them to the House of Winds, in Westminster; at such a time, with such a rivalry without, MR.. PUNCH does feel even more than his usual complacency in his back parlour, knowing that without raising himself the eighth of an inch from his easy chair, that without even purchasing an inch of ribbon, blue or yellow (the blue to show his love of Truth, the truth of the Hustings having, time out of mind, been beaten blue; the yellow, to show his contempt of the gold of the Minister), MR. PUNCH will be returned as M.P. for the whole empire; elected as the supplementary Six Hundred and Fifty-Ninth Member and Moderator of the old, acknowledged, constitutional 658. And this, without any effort on his part; with no treating, no music; with not so much as the froth of one bottle of ginger-beer; without one note from a hireling trumpet.

Now this was the belief simmering in the heart of PUNCH: such was the philosophical calmness in which as in his easy morning-gown-he was clothed from shoulders to heel, when it was announced to him by his Boy, who has seen so much of what are called the first people of the day, that from a lively child, the poor fellow has become absolutely dull-that a Deputation of the Empire was down stairs (at least the head of the Deputation; for it was long as the Sea-Snake, and with merely its head in No. 85 Fleet

Street: its tail, in which were joints from India and all the Colonies, was curling round Charing-Cross)-and pressed in the urgent manner, usual with Deputations, for an interview.

"There's no help for it," thought PUNCH; and so, calling into his face that sympathetic, benevolent, protective look that he once saw illumine the features of DERBY when, as the Farmer's Friend, he assured the men of Chawbeans-cum-Bacon, that they should have justice, and that wheat should be anything they liked a quarter-with this hopeful and paternal smile upon his features, MR. PUNCH received the Head of the Deputation.

"Gentlemen," said PUNCH, resolved to be short, "of course I shall continue to represent you. Go home, be happy, and make yourselves easy on that point. I shall not speak of my principles. The One-and-Twenty Volumes of my life"

("Two-and-Twenty," said our boy, in correction.)

"That is, the Two-and-Twenty-for on this day appears the Twenty-Second " (the Head of the Deputation seemed duly impressed with the fact)-"lie open before you. The Works of my Life! Turn over the leaves, gentlemen: lay your finger if you can upon any violation of any principle. There, gentlemen, in black and white, are the eleven important years of my existence; years dedicated to your service-and, through you, to the service, and solace, and satisfaction of the world.

"Gentlemen, I am the Paid Member for all England. The only Paid Member. Every man has his price. The price of PUNCH is Threepence-Fourpence stamped.

"I do not know, gentlemen, that I can add anything to this agreeable fact. Of course, I wish every year to be worthier of your confidence-your admiration: but I do not see how it is to be done. The possibility of the thing, as MR. DISRAELI says of Protection, seems to loom in the future; but further than the possibility, anything more than seeming-with MR. DISRAELI-I cannot even venture to predict.

"You will, therefore, gentlemen, receive the assurance of my distinguished consideration; and with it, the conviction that during the next Parliament-and all Parliaments to be continued--MR. PUNCH will be at his post."

Next morning, I read in the Times that "the Deputation took their leave of the Hon. Gentleman, highly satisfied with his condescension, and with the very flattering result of their interview."

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what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as dis tinctly to what she is giving her Royal sanction. Secondly, having once given her sanction to a measure, that it may be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her constitu tional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and the foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken, based upon that intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in

THE HE condition of England at the commencement of 1852 was most satisfactory. Trade was brisk and prosperous, the labouring population well employed, and even the agricultural community less noisy and grumbling than it had been for some years past. The large supplies of gold from Australia and California added to the general prosperity, and although good time; and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient the condition of France gave much uneasiness to the friends of peace in England, we were on satisfactory relations with all the world excepting the Kaffirs in South Africa, and with whom a lingering and vexatious war continued.

The political horizon, however, was not unclouded. A scrious difference had arisen in the Cabinet between the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and resulted in the dismissal even of LORD PALMERSTON. The cause of this disruption was thus explained in the House of Commons by LORD JOHN RUSSELL, and requires to be given somewhat at length :

"It will be right, said the noble Lord, that I should first state to the House what I conceive to be the position which a Secretary of State holds as regards the Crown in the administration of foreign affairs, and as regards the Prime Minister of this country. With respect to the first, I should state that when the Crown, in consequence of a vote of the House of Commons, places its constitutional confidence in a Minister, that Minister is, on the other hand, bound to afford to the Crown the most frank and full detail of every measure that is taken, or to leave to the Crown its full liberty, a liberty which the Crown must possess, of saying that the Minister no longer possesses its confidence. Such I hold to be the general doctrine. But, as regards the noble Lord, it did so happen that in August, 1850, the precise terms were laid down in a communication on the part of Her Majesty with respect to the transaction of business between the Crown and the Secretary of State. I became the organ of making that communication to my noble friend, and thus became responsible for the document I am about to read from. I shall refer only to that part of the document which has reference to the immediate subject:

"The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly state

time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they inust be sent The Queen thinks it best that Lord John Russell should show this letter to Lord Palmerston.'

off.

"I sent that accordingly, and received a letter in which the noble Lord said:

"I have taken a copy of this memorandum of the Queen, and will not fail to attend to the directions which it contains."

"The first important transaction in which Lord Palmerston had taken part since the end of the last session of Parliament, was his reception of a deputa tion of delegates from certain Metropolitan parishes, respecting the treatment of the Hungarian refugees by the Turkish Government. On this occasion he (Lord John Russell) thought that his noble friend had exhibited some want of due caution, but he gave him the credit of supposing that this was through an oversight. The next occasion to which he thought it necessary to refer, related to the events which had taken place on the 2nd of December, in France. The instructions conveyed to our Ambassador from the Queen's Government were to abstain from all interference in the internal affairs of that country. Being informed of an alleged conversation between Lord Palmerston and the French Ambassador repugnant to these instructions, he (Lord John) had written to that noble Lord, but his inquiries had for some days met with a disdainful silence, Lord Palmerston, having meanwhile, without the knowledge of his colleagues, written a despatch containing instructions to Lord Normanby, in which he, however, evaded the question, whether he had approved the act of the President. The noble Lord's course of proceeding in this matter he considered to be putting himself in the place of the Crown, and passing by the Crown, while he gave the moral approbation of England to the acts of the President of the Republic of France, in direct opposition to the policy which the Government had hitherto pursued. Under these circumstances, he (Lord John Russell) bad no alternative but to declare that while he was Prime Minister Lord Palmerston could not hold the seals of office, and he had assumed the sole and entire responsibility of advising the Crown to require the resignation of his noble friend, who, though he had forgotten and neglected what was due to the Crown and his colleagues, had not, he was convinced, intended any personal disrespect. Lord John deprecated in very earnest terms all harsh criticism upon the conduct of the ruler

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