ANGLICAN REPUBLICANISM.

Press, Volume XIX, Issue 2812, 7 May 1872, Page 3

ANGLICAN REPUBLICANISM.

The following amusing skit is from the " Tees Tickler," and refers to Anglican Republicanism and the Mr; Gladstone of the future :—At length the glorious day has arrived ? Everything had been disestablished, and on the resplendent ruins of the British Constitution, the People's William stood, calm, confideut, and big with that wondrous oratory which knows no rival. It was not Blackheath this time ; it was Bed-lam-cum-Babel, . and a hundred thousand people were assembled to hear the message of the President of the English Republic. Science had invented a machine which multiplied the volume of the President* voice twenty-fold. The machine was called the " Patent Political Bnzzer." Speaking through this, he was clearly audible to the outermost man of his square mile of audience. He was summing up what had been done towards the political millennium. The Church, he said, had been destroyed in England, the House of Lords had been merged into a Senate, salaried by the Government; the Commons were a purely Republican Assembly, always voting the Gladstone ticket; and the army and navy had been simply abolished as national institutions. Physical force had been superseded by talk, and Senator Bright and Prince Bismarck had established universal peace, founded upon—[A voice from the crowd : " Humbug."] [The author of this disgraceful interruption was at once taken in charge by seven hundred policemen, and severely bastinadoed. After this he was put into a straight jacket and compelled to etruggle out of the meeting.] Mr Gladstone resumed. The country had seen great changes. The Throne had gone into private lodgings, and the younger branches of the ex-Royal family had taken to commercial pursuits. One was a commission agent; another had gone into the iron trade; a third was engaged in opening public institutions and laying foundation stones, at so much per ceremony. They were earning decent competencies, save in the ease of the degenerate few who had accepted the disastrous elevation of foreign Thrones. His illustrious friend, Bradlaugh, was Minister of Education and Social Morality; his distinguished friend Odger was Minister of Public Works. Their distinguished but unhappily exiled refugee, Brighara Young, was engaged in an exhaustive enquiry to ascertain, as far as possible, what could be done towards the profitable employment of un-mar-ried women. The provincial prese was allpowerful, and the Newcattle Daily Chronicle was the official Moniteur vice the London Daily Telegraph, resigned in disgust. All large propertiet had beeu confiscated for the benefit of the Commonwealth, and game as it was called, had been completely destroyed by the abolition of the game laws. The noxious pheasant, the silly partridge, the perplexing grouse, had all disappeared, and hares were unknown iv the land. A.U rights of property under the coil—in the shape of coal, iron, and minerals in general—had reverted to the State, As with the land, so with the water. Thanks to an enlightened policy by which every man was entitled to have what he could capture, salmon' had disappeared from the rivers, and a world of trouble had been saved in legislation. Indeed, he might say that, in the enlightened age of which he had been the happy pioneer, all rights, except the right to make tremendous speeches, fead been done away with, and—to use a homely aphorism—-" one man vr&s as good as another, arid better too !" In the presence of that mighty assemblage—every man of which could hear him—thanks to the Patent Political Buzzer—he was not ashamed to say that all this was his work. He had said " every man" could hear him. K.e had forgotten to mention the women, of whom he saw so many. They were emancipated. They were no longer, as his friend Mr Mill would sf.y, -to, subjection. They were doctors of medicine, professors of law, and members of the National Assembly. A petticoat hung graceful! j from the jndicial Bench, A neat bonnet was to be found in Parliamentary Committee ou the long-vexed question of iiie Contagious Diseases Act. The necessity of that Act would shortly be settled—fn" oilier words, done away with— by what he might call shifting the responsibility. The men now were to be looked after. The women were well able to take care of themselves. Lastly, the Universities ■were happily abolished, &cd turned into rate-paid undenominational schools for promising idiots. Need he say any more ? [No, no LI The President of the English Re-

'publicTHen sal down/ and having carefully folded up his Patent Political Buzzer, left the platform of Benlam-cum-Babel, and was tremendously cheered as he leapt into his balloon, and departed for the Great Metrolopiis.