PUNCH.—­Most certainly:  the ropes of the state rudder are nothing more than cap-ribbons; if the minister hav’n’t hold of them, what can he do with the ship?  As for the debates in parliament, they have no more to do with the real affairs of the country than the gossip of the apple-women in Palace-yard.  They’re made, like the maccaroni in Naples, for the poor to swallow; and so that they gulp down length, they think, poor fellows, they get strength.  But for the real affairs of the country!  Who shall tell what correspondence can be conveyed in a warming-pan, what intelligence—­for

  “There may be wisdom in a papillote”—­

may be wrapt up in the curl-papers of the Crown?  What subtle, sinister advice may, by a crafty disposition of royal pins, be given on the royal pincushion?  What minister shall answer for the sound repose of Royalty, if he be not permitted to make Royalty’s bed?  How shall he answer for the comely appearance of Royalty, if he do not, by his own delegated hands, lace Royalty’s stays?  I shudder to think of it; but, without the key of the bedchamber, could my friend Peel be made responsible for the health of the Princess?  Instead of the very best and most scrupulously-aired diaper, might not—­by negligence or design, it matters not which—­the Princess Royal be rolled in an Act of Parliament, wet from Hansard’s press?

READER.—­Dreadful, soul perturbing suggestion!  Go on, Mr. PUNCH.

PUNCH.—­Not but what I think it—­if their constitution will stand damp paper—­an admirable way of rearing young princesses.  Queen Elizabeth—­my wife Judy was her wet nurse—­was reared after that fashion.

READER.—­David Hume says nothing of it.

PUNCH.—­David Hume was one of the wonders of the earth—­he was a lazy Scotchman; but had he searched the State Paper Office, he would have found the documents there—­yes, the very Acts of Parliament—­the very printed rollers.  To those rollers Queen Elizabeth owed her knowledge of the English Constitution.

READER.—­Explain—­I can’t see how.

PUNCH.—­Then you are very dull.  Is not Parliament the assembled wisdom of the country?

READER.—­By a fiction, Mr. PUNCH.

PUNCH—­Very well, Mr. Reader; what’s all the world but a fiction?  I say, the assembled wisdom; an Act of Parliament is the sifted wisdom of the wise—­the essence of an essence.  Very well; know you not the mystic, the medicinal effects of printer’s ink?  The devil himself isn’t proof to a blister of printer’s ink.  Well, you take an Act of Parliament—­and what is it but the finest plaster of the finest brains—­wet, reeking wet from the press.  Eschewing diaper, you roll the Act round the royal infant; you roll it up and pin it in the conglomerated wisdom of the nation.  Now, consider the tenderness of a baby’s cuticle; the pores are open, and a rapid and continual absorption takes place, so that long before the Royal infant cuts its first tooth, it has taken up into its system the whole body of the Statutes.