READER.—­Might not some patriots object to the application of the wisdom of the country to so domestic a purpose?

PUNCH.—­Such patriots are more squeamish than wise.  Sir, how many grown up kings have we had, who have shown no more respect for the laws of the country, than if they had been swaddled in ’em?

READER.—­Do you think your friend Sir Robert is for statute rollers?

PUNCH.—­I can answer for Sir Robert on every point.  His first attack before he kisses hands—­and he has, as you perceive, been practising this half-hour—­will be upon the women of the bedchamber.  The war with China—­the price of sugar—­the corn-laws—­the fourteen new Bishops about to be hatched—­timber—­cotton—­a property tax, and the penny post—­all these matters and persons are of secondary importance to this greater question—­whether the female who hands the Queen her gown shall think Lord Melbourne a “very pretty fellow in his day;” or whether she shall believe my friend Sir Robert to be as great a conjuror as Roger Bacon or the Wizard of the North—­if the lady can look upon O’Connell and not call for burnt feathers or scream for sal volatile; or if she really thinks the Pope to be a woman with a naughty name, clothed in most exceptionable scarlet.  It is whether Lady Mary thinks black, or Lady Clementina thinks white; whether her father who begot her voted with the Marquis of Londonderry or Earl Grey—­that is the grand question to be solved, before my friend Sir Robert can condescend to be the saviour of his country.  To have the privilege of making a batch of peers, or a handful of bishops is nothing, positively nothing—­no, the crowning work is to manufacture a lady’s maid.  What’s a mitre to a mob-cap—­what the garters of a peer to the garters of the Lady Adeliza?

READER.—­You are getting warm, Mr. PUNCH—­very warm.

PUNCH.—­I always do get warm when I talk of the delicious sex:  for though now and then I thrash my wife before company, who shall imagine how cosy we are when we’re alone?  Do you not remember that great axiom of Sir Robert’s—­an axiom that should make Machiavelli howl with envy—­that “the battle of the Constitution is to fought in the bedchamber.”

READER.—­I remember it.

PUNCH.—­That was a great sentence.  Had Sir Robert known his true fame, he would never after have opened his mouth.

READER.—­Has the Queen sent for Sir Robert yet?

PUNCH.—­No:  though I know he has staid at home these ten days, and answers every knock at the door himself, in expectation of a message.

READER.—­They say the Queen doesn’t like Sir Robert.

PUNCH.—­I’m also told that her Majesty has a great antipathy to physic—­yet when the Constitution requires medicine, why—­

READER.—­Sir Robert must be swallowed.

PUNCH.—­Exactly so.  We shall have warm work of it, no doubt—­but I fear nothing, when we have once got rid of the women.  And then, we have a few such nice wenches of our own to place about her Majesty; the Queen shall take Conservatism as she might take measles—­without knowing it.