THE SOCIAL TREAD-MILL.

Colonist, Issue 3, 30 October 1857, Page 4

THE SOCIAL TREAD-MILL.

. ' (From Punch.) " I have often wondered what sin the late Duke of Cambridge could have committed in any of his earlier phases of existence to have been condemned, while in the flesh, under his last title, to preside,. at so many public dinners. 'I This social punishment—the public dinner —is, I believe, peculiar to this island. An attempt was made to introduce it into France, which ended, as might have been expected, in a ; revolution. Yes—the-Pro-visional Government of 1848 was installed: in consequence of the; public dinners— hs Banquets, /as they were called—organised by tire parliamentary reformers of Paris. You may tell me the revolution broke out because the public dinners were not allowed to take place. I will not quibble with you about a word of three -letters. But I know how. history is written; and I know---do I not know?—the miseries of a public dinner. •;-! ■■ •• ■. '■ . .-.■ .;. ';■ "You admit a connection between the public dinner and the Revolution of 1848. Very well, then. I assume that the French are at once a social and a gastronomic race. I.can understand such a race rising as one man against the attempt to thrust a public dinner down their throats. But I cannot imagine their upsetting the Government which protected them from the infliction. I go on probabilities, which to me are proofs, for they rest upon the eternal nature of things. I,still believe the risingof Paris in 1848 was against the attempt to introduce the punishment of the public dinner, and that, in the confusion, the Provisional Government somehow got flung to the surface, and staid there till further orders. " Prisoners, under tyranny and longcontinued torture, have sometimes risen, brained their gaolers with their handcuffs, and either broken prison, or been shot down, sullenly, in unappeased revolt. I wonder why we, who are condemned, most of us, to public dinners in perpetuity,' do not, some day, rise at Freemasons' Tavern, or the Albion, beat out the brains of the landlords and waiters, strangle the stewards, choke the glee-singers with the pastry, and tear that Toole of tyranny, the toastmaster, limb from limb. "I think we shall hear of these things happening some clay—-and then the site of the Freemasons' Tavern will be .what the site of the Bastile is now. There will be a column erected to the memory of: those citizens who arose and plucked down an odious tyranny. Those who had long groaned under public dinners will come annually and deposit wreaths of immortelles on the base of the column. . '; "I am willing to guide the movement. I demand the head of Toole! I refuse to be any mose treated as a social vassal, tailleahle et corveable a merci by Hospitals; by Asylums; by blind, deaf, dumb, halt, lame, and maimed Institutions; by Curates' Governesses', Printers', Clerks's Widows', Orphans', Shoeblacking boys', Image boys', Climbing boys', or any other kind of boys', Aid Societies; by Young men's, Old'men's, Middleaged men's, Bargemen's, Market Gardener's, or any other Mutual Instruction Association! By Funds, Literary, Dramatic, Musical, or Equestrian; by Scotch Widows; by Decayed or Shipwrecked Mariners; lay Foreigners in Distress; by Distressed Needlewomen;; by oppressed Dressmakers; by, Intending Emigrants; by Club-footed Persons, or those inflicted with Spinal Disorder, or Opthalmia; by Invalid Gentlewomen, or Sick Children, or Incurables; by Licensed Victuallers, Butchers, and Bakers. Tfling all ' the objects of this association' to the wind. I will not. be a steward though tempted by a dinner-card gratis: I will •not put down myjiame for a handsome donation, though quite aware that I never, shall be asked to pay up : I will cut. my tonge out rather than acknowledge a toast: I will mount the scaffold sooner than the chair : and I will perish before I pay for a ticket. lam ready to enroll members in an Anti-Public Dinner Association, the foundation of which shall be celebrated by a public Good gracious!— How difficult it is to shake off the habits of the prison-house! . Men who have long worn fetters will ever after, we know, walk as if the iron was still about their ancles/ •* I and my association wore on the verge of self-dostruction, about to be rendered up again by this hand of mine to the tough mercies of Messrs. Bathe and Breach, and the tortures of Toole! Not that the tyranny of these men is ever openly protested against. There is either a hollow - submission to it, or a callous courting of it, and an exultation under.it like that of French gakriens singing in their chai'ne. There

are few things sadder than to see a prisoner insensible to his shame. To hear John Bull talk, you would, imagine he looked upon the public dinner as a privilege and not as a punishment. . t "' We English'—he will tell some poor, eagerly-assenting, smilingI,':1,': galvanic- foreigner, who bows affiraiatives.to'eVer^ sentence" before it is wellspoken—' We English are cold^-shy—stiff; but at bottom we are a. social people, Mosoo. We "can; do nothing without a dinner. When our hearts are warmed with a good meal and a social glass of wine, Mosoo, —Gad—we-'are the best company in the: world—can't 'refuse- ' each other anything; we are full of enthusiasm, Sir, —running over with loyalty and , brotherly love; —we think nothing, Mosoo, of collecting a thousand pounds in the room while the singing's goin on.' •'And the foreigner is amazed at "the--1 force cT agglomeration sociale' among these English, and goes home and tries to intrude the public dinner among his countrymen,and Government perishes in the attempt. " How should we like to see introduced among us those Chinese punishments, of which such agreeable representations have been figuring of late in the cheap printshop windows, of people being sawn to death between planks, planted up to the neck in the ground to starve, with food and drink just out of reach of the lips, and so forth? " I look on the introduction of the public dinner in any country where it is unknown, in much the same light as I should the extension to our criminal system of these penal refinements of the Celestial Empire. When I hear a brother Bull cramming such statements as are above written into foreign ears, I blush for my' species. ' " For whatever outward submission there may be amongst ourselves, I know that I never mention the public dinner to an Englishman singly, but I find, him, like myself, glowing with impatient disgust of that infliction, and ready to join" in any attempt to put it down. Unless indeed he happen, at the moment; to be sentenced as a steward with the aggravation of a list to make up—added, as they add .private whippings- to a term of imprisonment, sometimes—or—still worse—condemned to the chair, with hard labour at the toasts. In such cases, instead of responding to one's own impatience, men will endeavonr to draw one", on into participation in their punishment—as convicts are always found anxious to do. " But with foreigners it is not uncommon to hear the tone taken which I have described above. "Now the man who talks thus,, knows as. well as you*>r I, that it is all humbug.; that there is no sociality in the public dinner; no real kindliness of heart engendered by it; ho wholesome and blessed charity set flowing by its aid; that the speeches spoken at it are tissues of gross and fulsome flattery; that its enthusiasm is as evanescent and spurious as the bead in its gooseberry champagne; that its brotherhood is maudlin; its philanthropy a sham; its music, generally, the grossest form1 of the art; its cookery and its wine frequently abominable; its talk either stammering,1 incoherent imbecility, or fluent balderbash. In short, if I were asked to sum into the briefest expression the spirit of the public, dinner, I know of no better words than ' Sham' and ' Snobbishness.'" ■■