The conclusion of our Reverend humourist's epistle is capital. No doubt such an arrangement as that of shutting up "a romantic ruin," a scene of picturesque and venerable beauty, replete with historical associations of famous memory, suggestive of lofty and solemn thought: no doubt the arrangement of closing such an objectionable place as this on the Sunday, must have "added much to the morality and proper observance" of that day in the parish, by tending considerably to increase the congregation at--the public-house.
And did you ne'er hear of a jolly old Waterman Who at the cabstand used for to ply? He feathered his nest with the passenger's halfpennies, Smoking his pipe, with a drop in each eye. He looked so drunk--yet stood so steadily. The drivers all flocked to his stand so readily; And he eyed the old rogues with so knowing an air, For this Waterman knew they would cheat every fare.
What sights of gents drunk and incapable, very, He'd clean out so nice, and politely withal, As he called the first cab, when the finely-dressed victims Came staggering out from Cremorne or Vauxhall, And oftentimes would they be quizzing and queering, And 'twas all one to TOM, all this chaffing and jeering: For laughing or chaffing he little did care, For this Waterman wished but to rifle the fare.
And yet but to see how strangely things happen, As he jogged along, thinking of nothing at all, He was caught by a Cab Act so awfully stringent, That it caused all the tricks of the cab stand to fall. But would this old Waterman feel proper sorrow, For all his old tricks, and turn honest to-morrow; And should this old Waterman act with more care, He'll be licensed, and never impose on a fare.
A young lady calls MR. HOBBS, CUPID, because CUPID is LOVE, and LOVE, as the proverb says, laughs at locksmiths, and so does MR. HOBBS.
A CABMAN'S IDEA OF A FARE.--A cheque on a Banker.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF AN OFFICER IN THE BLUES.]
Really the Conscience Money Mania is becoming quite a nuisance. Every day, almost, the _Times_ contains some such announcement as this:--
"The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER acknowledges the receipt of half-notes value £15, for unpaid Income Tax."
A good healthy conscience is the noblest point in the character of that noblest work of creation--an honest man. But a diseased conscience is as bad as a rotten potato; it is worse than no conscience at all: some degrees below mere dishonesty. This kind of conscience makes people pay omitted Income Tax. They shouldn't do so. It is really quite immoral. The Income Tax is acknowledged to be an imposition by GLADSTONE himself, insomuch that he has even made arrangements for its cessation. That it never will cease, however; that it will be as perennial as evil in the abstract, or the Deuce himself, is feared by everybody except the jolly beggars, and those who are too ignorant and helpless, or too lazy, to earn liability to its infliction. Any symptoms of acquiescence in it, of anything but dogged opposition to it, on the part of the public, will infallibly encourage Chancellors of the Exchequer to try and perpetuate it. To pay it voluntarily, to pay it at all except under protest, to pay it under any circumstances whatever but those of legal necessity, is to give Chancellors of the Exchequer that encouragement: much more to pay it in a conspicuous and ostentatious manner, at beat of drum, so to speak, as the gentleman settles his just accounts in _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_. And this is encouraging the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER to go on cheating the nation, or rather cheating part of the nation, in order to bribe the rest. It is being an accessory to the confiscation of one's own property; to defrauding one's self: whereas, surely, if suicide is the worst kind of murder, self-cozenage is the vilest sort of roguery. Therefore, we argue that the conscientiousness that pays conscience money on account of Income Tax is, as aforesaid, morbid; a diseased bump, in phrenological language, which ought to be shaved, and have ice put to it, or leeches, or cupping glasses after scarification, to be followed by a blister: recourse to these antiphlogistic measures being combined with alterative and cooling medicines.