Various

“ We never looked upon a lark in a cage, and heard him trilling out his music as he sprang upwards to the roof of his prison, but we felt sickened with the sight and sound, as contrasting, in our thought, the free minstrel of the morning, bounding as it were into the blue caverns of the heavens, with the bird to whom the world was circumscribed. May the time soon arrive, when every prison shall be a palace of the mind—when we shall seek to instruct and cease to punish. PUNCH has already advocated education by example. ”

“ Golden circlets, with their adornments of coloured and lustrous gems, have bound the brow of infamy as well as that of honour—a mockery to both; as though virtue required a reward beyond the fulfilment of its own high purposes, or that infamy could be cheated into the forgetfulness of its vileness by the weight around its temples! Gilded coaches have glided before us, in which sat men who thought the buzz and shouts of crowds a guerdon for the toils, the anxieties, and, too often, the peculations of a life. ”

“ But as we never look for perfection in human nature, it is too much to expect it in wood. We wish it to be understood that we repudiate such principles and conduct. We have a Judy of our own, and a little Punchininny that commits innumerable improprieties; but we fearlessly aver that we never threw him out of window, nor belaboured the lady with a stick—even of the size allowed by law.
There is one portion of the drama we wish was omitted, for it always saddens us—we allude to the prison scene. PUNCH, it is true, sings in durance, but we hear the ring of the bars mingling with the song. ”

“ The instinct of the brute has almost germinated into reason. Man has reason, why not give him intelligence?
We now come to the last great lesson of our motley teacher—the gallows! that accursed tree which has its root in injuries. How clearly PUNCH exposes the fallacy of that dreadful law which authorises the destruction of life! PUNCH sometimes destroys the hangman: and why not? Where is the divine injunction against the shedder of man's blood to rest? None can answer! To us there is but ONE disposer of life. At other times PUNCH hangs the devil: this is as it should be. ”

“ We are advocates for the correction of offenders; but how many generous and kindly beings are there pining within the walls of a prison, whose only crimes are poverty and misfortune! They, too, sing and laugh, and appear jocund, but the heart can ever hear the ring of the bars. ”

“ As on the stage of PUNCH's theatre, many characters appear to fill up the interstices of the more important story, so our pages will be interspersed with trifles that have no other object than the moment's approbation—an end which will never be sought for at the expense of others, beyond the evanescent smile of a harmless satire. ”

“ With 'Uncle MARK' in the chair, I knew there would be neither austere autocracy, nor fainéant laxity, neither weakness of stroke nor foulness of blow, neither Rosa-Matilda-ish, mawkishness, nor Rabelaisian coarseness.
"How well I remember my first group of 'Young Men,'" pursued Mr. Punch, musingly. "There was swift and scathing DOUGLAS JERROLD, with his tossed and tangled mane of grey hair. GILBERT ABBOTT À BECKETT, too, the whimsically witty, the drolly satirical, the comically caustic. ”

“ Why, Sir, say even that your modesty, which astonishes me more and more every time I regard you, is calculated, and not a virtue naturally inherent in you, that very fact would argue for the high sense of the public morality among us. We will laugh in the company of our wives and children; we will tolerate no indecorum: we like that our matrons and girls should be pure. ”

“ Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for party must destroy patriotism. ”

“ The boys will be the greatest sufferers. One of them had stripped his jacket of all its buttons as a deposit on some tom-trot, which the house had promised to supply on the following day; and we regret to say, there are whispers of other transactions of a similar character.
Money has been abundant all day, and we saw a half-crown piece and some halfpence lying absolutely idle in the hands of an individual, who, if he had only chosen to walk with it into the market, might have produced a very alarming effect on some minor description of securities. ”

“ Destroy the principle of evil by increasing the means of cultivating the good, and the gallows will then become as much a wonder as it is now a jest.
We shall always play PUNCH, for we consider it best to be merry and wise ”

“ Of all who filled the House on that night, only two have seats in the present Parliament—Mr. G., and the humble person who, by favour of the Electors of Barkshire, is permitted to pen these lines. (CHRISTOPHER TALBOT, then represented Glamorganshire, but he just failed to live into this Jubilee time.) Yet, when I look round on the Benches now, I see a score of men who bear the names, and are, in many cases, descendants, of Members who sat in the Parliament that will ever have a place in history, if only because it was born in the same year, almost in the same month, as Mr. Punch. ”

“ In modest retirement at the end of the Bench sat a young man, of full height, and good figure, with a mass of black hair crowning a large, well-shaped head. Remember noticing how carefully the hair was parted down the middle, in a fashion then unusual with men. ”

“ STANSFELD sat for Huddersfield, and MARJORIBANKS for Hythe, a LAWSON for Knaresborough, a BECKETT for Leeds, a CHILDERS for Malton, a MANNERS for Newark-upon-Trent, having a certain WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE for colleague. He was the Lord JOHN, well known to students of poetry, who now wears a Ducal coronet.
Of course there was a SMITH, VERNON by Christian name, Member for Northampton; a HOULDSWOTH representing Nottinghamshire, a MACLEAN for Oxford, a HARCOURT for Oxfordshire—nay, in this happy Parliament there were two HARCOURTS, GRANVILLE HARCOURT VERNON sitting for East Retford. ”