RUINED ENGLAND!
(An Article intended for the “Morning ‘Tizer.”)
elas! Our worst fears have been realised. Her enemies have triumphed, and England, erstwhile “merry,” sitteth groaning in despair. Aristocratic Nonchalance, in league with classic Imbecility hath, as we predicted, turned traitor in the camp, and thrown open the gates to let in the invader. The dotard Palmerston, in concert with the dull and drivelling Gladstone, hath dome the dastard’s deed for which Posterity will damn him, and e’en Antiquity would, if it had but known it, joined the curse!
Alas! Yes, it is too true. Government have carried their reduction of the wine duties, and the trade in British beer and British brandy therefore dies. While we write, the French invasion of cheap wines has begun. Their light clarets are trooping to supplant our “heavy wet.” Thin Bordeaux is coming to knock down our bottled stout, and rot-gut Roussillou will wave the spigot over prostrate Bass. Allsopp’s ale will fall ne’er more to rise again (in price). Reid will soon be shaken by the ill wind of adversity. Whitbread & Co.’s Entire will be entirely swept away, and not a drop remain unspilt of Truman’s half and half. Barklay will take refuge in the Courts of Basinghall Street, and over head and ears in trouble will be Charrington and Head. Meux’s double X will be X-tinguished by Médoc, while the frenzied friends of Free Trade will in bad French cry, “tant Meux!”
And is this – let us gravely ask our readers – is this nothing? Do you call it nothing to destroy the British nation? – by depriving it of health and wealth, nay, everything but name? For that the budget will be nationally the death of us, who doubts? Rob a Briton of his beer, and you rob him of his life. You take away his stamina, if you take away his stout. To substitute sour claret for sweet wholesome malt and hops, would be, at a blow, to break his staff of life, and sap the very bulwarks of the British constitution!
Yet this is what the enemies of England have been doing; and fools, to quote the poet -
“Have werry much applauded them,
For what they’ve been and done.”
Little think they of the consequences of this rash, this awful act! Little think they that they’ve mined the deep foundations of the State, and dealt Britannia a home-thrust which she for ages hence must stagger under. Little reck they that our soldiers will lose their pith and pluck, and our sailors get as watery and weak as their French drinks; that our natives will ere long become as nerveless as our navvies, and our armies be deprived of e’en the strength to use their legs. Thinned by thin sour wine, our forces soon will be our weaknesses. True Britons, it is well known, subsist mainly upon beer; and if they cannot keep their pecker up, goodbye to their pluck.
As we are addressing a moneyed class of men, we consider less their pleasures than we do their pockets. Else might we dilate on the deliciousness of Beer, and the delights which it bestows upon the minds which truly relish it. Dulce est desippere. Sweet it is to sip, and yet more delectable is it to drink deeply of. Nor is its nutrition of less note than its niceness. As Plato well remarks in the second of his Georgics, “Siney Bacco friget Venus, which, we need not tell our readers, means that malt and hops invigorate the body, Baccus being, as all know, the classic synonym for Beer.
And alas! this mind-improving, muscle-fortifying beverage are we going to exchange for some few hogsheads of vile hog-swill? Well, “What must be, must,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet hath it. But the game of the French Emperor may be seen with half an eye by any one, like us, who is not blinded, ay, and hoodwinked, by the spectacles of Office. When his clarets have invaded us, his cavalry will follow them, and in our beerless and brainless state an easy conquest will be possible. After giving us his bottles, he will come and give us battle, and then woe betide the dupes and dotards who have trusted him!
The Sun of England will set, and her fair daughters be left brotherless. The flaunting flag of Liberty, of Britons long the boast, no more will flutter o’er the sea that girts our native coast! The Gallic Cock will crow on this side of the Channel, while ‘neath the paw of the French poodle will the British lion crouch, and whine pulingly for mercy with his tail between his legs, however much the ‘Tizer may try to get his monkey up.
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