MELBOURNE PUNCH TO COUNCILLOR BOWDEN. onary of the honor and his fee. AGACIOUS AND MINACIOUS COUNCILLOR, Punch applauds your audacity, and venerates your valour; albeit both halt upon the verge of action. Yet wherefore BO? Wherefore are you valiant in words only, and audacious-like the Archduke of Austriain the abundance of superfluous breath?"" Consider, my dearly beloved Bowden, the opportunities you have wantonly neglected of obtaining notoriety for yourself, and conferring an inestimable blessing upon oury country. A few weeks since, you threatened to choke a brother Councillor: Why did you hesitate to perform so meritorious and patriotic an act? Would that you had choked a dozen corporators; and have endel by, but no! have patience, and do not disappoint a public functi Mankind concur in lauding Hercules-perhaps you may have heard of Hercules?-for slaying the Erymanthian boar;-what eternal glory would be yours if you had strangled a dozen bores! A grateful municipality would have awarded you a mural crown, and Punch would have publicly presented you with a wreath of bays. Why, oh, why, did you not throttle your antagonist? More recently, you intimated that if the inventor of an alleged new motive power had been a younger man, you would have moved, as a rider to an amendment proposed at a public meeting, that the pertinacious inventor should be dipped in the Yarra. Why did you not proceed to action on the instant, and quench that "Kentish fire" in the "ever-flowing" river? Again one Ransom swears-to be sure he is only a hackney-coachman, and therefore his oath has no value whatever, when opposed to your testimony, in the estimation of Minos Sturt, the just, the honest, the upright, and the infallible-Ransom swears that you threatened "to shoot him like a dog" (under convenient cover of the favoring darkness). Why, I repeat, did you not carry your threat into execu tion? "Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valour As thou art in desire?" Justice-not the squinting harridan, who sits without her bandage or her scales, in Swanston-street, but a worthier representative of the goddess, presiding in the Supreme Court,-would have rewarded you with a hempen necklace and a short shrift. You would have been promoted to an elevation which you are peculiarly calculated to adorn. You would have made the acquaintance of ministers of religion;possibly you might have imbibed a small portion of its spirit. A cast of your head (with the organ of destructiveness slightly exaggerated) would have adorned the museum of the enthusiastic Sohier: and your exit from the world would have been "improved" in pamphlets and in pulpits. Oh! my dear Bowden, with those homicidal propensities of yours, you are bound to shoot, or drown, or strangle somebody: therefore why dally with it? Why tantalize us with exciting prophecies of violence, which you hesitate to fulfil? Why talk of choking and drowning and shooting, when your grip should be upon the throat of a hostile. corporator, or your pistol "within ten yards" of the head of a vindictive cab nan? Be a man, Councillor Bowden, and no longer MELBOURNE PUNCH. VICTORIAN CANDIDATES AND MELBOURNE REVIEWERS. Still must I hear? Shall Pat O'Brien bawl 'Tis known he was chief spirit of the throng Of worse misrule than his, few ever dreamed, See where the gallant Captain Pasley comes, ONE OF THE NINETY. I should have gone in for Council before, only it's such a precious hard job to muster what they call political opinions, and writing them addresses is'nt in my line. ANOTHER OF THE NINETY. Ah! you should have done like me and paid a fellow to do all that. Blow the addresses. Let you and me and few more like us get in and we'll let 'em know what orders in council mean anyways. That's my game. But when stern duty bade him here remain Last of the seven and youngest of the band GARDENING OPERATIONS FOR AUGUST. Great diligence must be exercised this month in pruning young trees before they begin to shoot, because the shooting season commences here as in England, on the first of September. There is nothing like activity in theis operation. If you intend having boiled mutton on a Sunday, sow a few turnips not later than the previous Thursday. If you are a married man, your wife will do all the sowing while you cut about and get some cuttings; every tailor knows that. Plant gooseberries ten feet apart, prepare the holes with a corkscrew and cover them up with lime to protect them from the slugs who are instantly destroyed by the acid of the lime juice. Rhubarb seeds may be planted closer and a little magnesia substituted for the lime. These brief remarks are the result of prolonged reflection and lengthened experience, and are offered to the public in the patriotic hope of st.mulating the scientific cultare of colonial green-grocery. There is no reason why we should be dependent upon foreign countries for green-grocery or any kind of grocery, tea, sugar, tobacco, pickled onions, or any vegetable in daily requirement. The cultivation of the tea-tree is simple in the extreme. You get your plants from the Yarra's bank, put them in At a meeting of the Mount Barker District Council, as reproted in the Adelaide Observer, the following resolution adopted : pots (common tea-pots), water them carefully (boiling water); and when full grown, scrape the roots in the usual way. Sugar well deserves a small space of ground reserved for its production. It grows upon a cane, and the best variety is the large Malacca cane, canis major of Linnæus, which bears fruit twice a year, in pods containing exactly half a pound. Tobacco is raised from cuttings easily enough, but carefully exclude any portion of a cigar, or some weeds will appear as a natural consequence. If the season be dry, keep an eye upon your onions, they require watering, but don't keep your eye too close or that will be watering too. If the weather is wet, never mind the onions, but stop in doors and look after the leaks. Radishes may be grown this month under glass, the best kind is the horse radish which makes an excellent pudding for invalids. New ground must be trenched two spits deep by an American spittoon, and well manured with bones which may be bned from Carlton Gardens and the boner be entitled to a bonus. Some judgment must be exercised in the application of this powerful fertiliser, as we have heard of an unfortunate gardener injudiciously applying a cartload of marrow bones to his half-acre allotment,; it has produced nothing but vegetable marrow ever since. This being leap year, hops may be grown, but will not take a start until the spring time. It would be as well to get in a little Indian-corn, as it is excelent food for pigs and produces corned pork. UNSETTLED DISTRICTS.-Town Hall.-Gas Committee Room and Saint Patricks' Hall. SETTLED DISTRICTS.-Footscray Court. OPENING UP OF THE LANDS.-Bullock Drays up to the axle-wheels. NEW PATENT.-Mungo Park Smith's superior Park Rib-bone Crushers are now to be seen at all the entrances of Fitzroy and Carlton Ga dens. PHRENOLOGY.-Mr. David Blair's success in exploding Phrenology by means of Psychology, has induced him, we are informed, to turn his attention to geology, which he is going to upset with the help of Pneumatics. He will subsequently have a round with the other physical sciences in succession. ADULT EDUCATION. I must not digress longer, however, because I want particularly to strengthen the sound conviction which I am happy to see already has more or less hold upon most of you-the conviction that the art of legislation comes by nature. Indeed if it did not come by nature not but during these many years past we should never have been the only would it be impossible for the majority of yourselves to practise it exquisitely governed people we are. MR. PUNCH'S LECTURES-No. 3-TO CANDIDATES. One Dogberry of whom some of you may possibly have heard or read-and of whom many of you in the commission of the peace often remind me-observes with great force that "To be a well favoured man is the gift of fortune, but writing and reading come by nature". If this be true of writing and reading, it is at least equally so of the art of lexislation. No previous training of any kind is required. and what makes this the more remarkable is that the art appears to be in some respects one of considerable difficulty and complication. Led astray by these appearances indeed many well meaning but mistaken persons have been at the pains to write books not only upon the arts of Government and legislation but also upon certain sciences, as these writers call them, a knowledge of which they maintain is essential to the safe and successful practice of those arts. Of these scientific works - or rather let me say of these pedantic works of supererogation-some for example refer to what is called Political economy. Political economy professes to treat of certain so-called laws of nature which it is said govern and controul the production of national wealth as inevitably as heat causes iron to expand, and cold causes water to freeze. Political economy professes to teach by what course the superfluities of one country find their way to supply the wants of another-the operation direct and indirect of taxes and imposts in fostering and checking particular branches of commerce and manufacturing industry-how schemes designed for the encouragement and protection of particular interests frequently occasion great real harm in exchange for little seeming good how cost of production and supply and demand acting reformation. I appeal to you whether it be not absurd to suppose upon the value of commodities-and a hundred other things to the like small purpose. Numbers of authors among whom I may mention Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Chalmers, Mill, Senior, and such representatives of the illustrious obscure have dragged their readers after them through bottomless bogs of speculation, as to this precious subject. Need I say how gratified I was in reading your numerous addresses to find in very few of them the slightest trace of the writers' having ever wasted their time over the curious impertinencies of political economy. No, Gentlemen: I believe almost all of you to belong to a class that is ever the object of my warmest admiration-the class of "eminently practical men.' I use the term in it's ordinary acceptation, dividing the species "Practical men" however into many varieties. One for example is distinguished by his having made money (but you must not suppose that all men who have made money deserve the honourable appellation of practical men). His nest is neatly made and feathered the feathers of pigeons being not unfrequently detected in the lining. His voice is apt to be harsh and discordant, and he is ordinarily rather red about the gills. He-but hold-I declare I am getting metaphorical, and that will never do in addressing practical men. He will The sort of man I mean, besides being rich is generally fonder of feeding than of reading, and of drinking than of thinking. give you a capital bottle of port, but occasionally inspires one with the wish that it were etiquette to carry the wine home and drink it there rather than "on the premises." He is not a profound theologian, but has a great horror of heterodoxy as something that should always be discountenanced by a gentleman of his means and respectability. He is not a man to wear out many flints with his own knees, but he conceives religion to be a most respectable institution, and moreover has a vague conviction that it contributes to the value of Government securities, and he "supports religion" accordingly both with purse and personal alumbers every Sunday in his most respectable-looking pew. He retires to rest every night with an empty head and a full stomach. He is part and parcel of the British Constitution, and consequently shares with it the honour of being the envy of surrounding nations and the admiration of the world. Another variety is not wealthy but is admitted to belong to the race of practical men by reason of total absence of imagination and by virtue of general stolidity. An individual of this species to be perfect must not possess two abstract ideas and those two must be wrong. He should be middle-aged, methodical, somewhat slow of speech, and as selfish as possible. This causes him to be considered an excellent man of business, and to be much esteemed by merchants, bankers, and others. I must not however stop to enumerate all the varieties of practical men, though I must in passing pay a tribute of admiration to those eminently practical men among the squatting candidates who enter Council with the most explicit personal purposes, and a perfect freedom from even the suspicion of patriotic motives. VOL. II. and chairs, you would apprentice them to some master of the art of Another proof of the great truth that the art of legislation comes by nature is to be found in the expedition with which what are called "principles" may be acquired. A few weeks ago, for example. Mr. F. Stephen, addressing the constituency whose support he solicits, declared that he had paid no attention to politics, and did not happen to have any principles about him at the moment--but that he would get them immediately. This he has since done-having provided himself with a complete set, without difficulty or loss of time. ticular On the subject of your addresses I shall be very brief, as you will find some perfect models in my advertising columns, and some pargems, displayed with appropriate settings, in other parts of my immortal work. I must however express my warm approval of the course some of you have adopted in getting your addresses written for you, because as practical men-that sort of thing is a good deal out of the line of most of you. I have heard it urged against this practice that a candidate's address purports to be a sort of sample by which those to whom he offers himself may judge of his quality, and that it is a kind of fraud to present that as a sample which has no resemblance --so to speak-to the bulk of the hogs-head which he is endeavouring merchant were selling a quantity of bad butter he would have no right to dispose of. What nonsense! It might as well be said that if a to give the friend he dealt with a taste of good butter a thing done by the most respectable men in our own times. Besides, I recommend many candidates to get their addresses written for them, if only on the principle of securing the greatest happiness to the greatest number, inasmuch as candidates and electors in that case alike enjoy the novelty of the thing. I am told that a very eminent capitalist discovers something new in his address every time he hears it read. After all, moreover, your addresses differ more as to your views upon grammar than upon politics; for were it not for the unsettled questions of State Aid to Religion, Compensation to Squatters, and the theories of Lindley Murray, (whom, poor man, nobody has yet proposed to compensate for the injuries he has sustained,) there would be cies. Who, however, could object to monotony in the enunciation of an almost intolerable sameness about your epistles to the constituensuch noble sentiments-who would not share the delight I feel when I come on the address of some man whom I have always imagined to be fitter for the treadmill than the Legislature, and find that he too C |