But to return to the Queen and the English Royal Family. Amongst _Punch's_ unconscious prophecies room must certainly be found for his reference, in a satire of the Queen's speech when Peel was Premier, to Her Majesty as "Victoria Windsor" nearly seventy-five years before the surname was formally adopted by her grandson. The suggested statue to Cromwell at the new Houses of Parliament gave rise to a long and heated controversy in 1845 in which _Punch_ ranged himself militantly among the partisans of the Protector. He published mock protests from various sovereigns; he considered Cromwell's claim side by side with those of the "Sexigamist" murderer Henry VIII and other kings, and printed a burlesque design of his own, with a sneer at Pugin for his "determined zeal in keeping up the bad drawing of the Middle Ages."
[Illustration: SHOULD CROMWELL HAVE A STATUE?]
The Queen's visit to Ireland in 1849 is treated in considerable detail, and in an optimistic vein. _Punch_ never believed in the Repeal Agitation or in Daniel O'Connell, whom he regarded as a trading patriot and a self-seeking demagogue, contrasting him unfavourably with Father Mathew. Nor had he any sympathy with "Young Ireland," or Thomas Davis, or the romantic leaders of the movement of 1848; as for Smith O'Brien, an immortality of ridicule was conferred on him in Thackeray's famous ballad on "The Battle of Limerick." The terrible ravages of the potato famine had evoked _Punch's_ sympathy; but his hopes of an enduring reconciliation were small, and he quotes the tremendous saying of Giraldus Cambrensis that Ireland would be pacified _vix paulò ante Diem Judicii_--or only just before the Day of Judgment. Still, the Queen's visit was hailed as of good omen, though _Punch_ reminds her that she had only seen the bright side of the dark Rosaleen--palaces and not cabins. "Let Erin _forget_ the days of old" is the burden of his song; at least he refrained from quoting--if he ever knew of it--that other terrible saying that "Ireland never forgets anything except the benefits that she has received." The Queen's magnanimity and clemency to her traducer Jasper Judge in the same year called forth a warm eulogium. Judge was a thief and a spy, yet the Queen, on the petition of his wife, paid the costs of her vilifier.