makes provision for such a
cartoon, the statement is not to be accepted.

It was really a poor thing, that first cartoon--"Candidates under
Different Phases;" but it possessed over the little "caricatures" by
Robert Seymour in Gilbert a Beckett's "Figaro in London," that had gone
before, the important advantage of size. It was smaller than the
hideously vulgar cuts in the "Penny Satirist," but--in tone, at
least--this harmless satire on Parliamentary candidates displayed a
refreshing and a highly appreciated decency and moderation. And since
that time, whether satirical or frankly funny, sarcastic or witty,
compassionate or denunciatory, eulogistic, sympathetic, indignant, or
merely expository, the cartoons have rarely overstepped the boundary of
good taste, or done aught but express fearlessly, honestly, and so far
as may be gracefully, the popular feeling of the moment.

It is just this happy ability of _Punch's_ to reflect the opinion of the
country that gave it the great power it attained and won it the respect
of every successive Government. It is true that of late years Mr. Punch
has rather followed public opinion than led it; and it is equally true
that he now represents a higher stratum of society than at first, when
Jerrold week after week pleaded the cause of the poor. Yet the
Governments of the day might have applied to him Addison's words--

"In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee"--

and esteemed themselves happy when _Punch_ smiled upon them. "What
_Punch_ says" appears to be a good deal to the Great Ones of our world,
thick-skinned though they be; for even outside politics, they have,
generally speaking, accepted as an axiom "Vox Punchii, vox Populi;"
while Cabinet Ministers, from the Premier downwards, have hoped from his
benevolence and feared from his hostility! When Mr. Mundella publicly
declared that "_Punch_ is almost the most dangerous antagonist that a
politician could have opposed to him--for myself I would rather have
_Punch_ at my back in any political or social undertaking than half the
politicians of the House of Commons," he was merely expressing a
conviction on the part of statesmen that many of them have given
evidence of. It is another proof of the power of the caricaturist--a
very proper respect for the smile which brings p