The cartoon is accompanied by this comment:-- The Duke has made his political blunders and in his time talked political nonsense as well as his inferiors. Moreover he exhibits a defective sympathy with the people.... Nevertheless, contrasting Wellington's answer to the proposed death of the ex-Emperor with Napoleon's reward of the would-be assassin of the General (i.e. Wellington himself), need we ask which is the Giant and which is the Dwarf? Other dukes cut a less dignified figure in the lean years which preceded the repeal of the Corn Laws--whether as coal-owners, Protectionists, or strict enforcers of the Game-Laws. [Footnote 15: Colonel Garwood's selections from the Duke of Wellington's Dispatches.] [Illustration: HENRY MARQUESS OF WATERFORD: A NEW STATUE OF ACHILLES Cast from Knockers taken in the vicinities of Sackville Street, Vigo Lane, and Waterloo Place.] The first hint of the long campaign against the Dukes of Bedford in connexion with "Mud Salad Market" occurs in February, 1844. The Dukes of Sutherland, Atholl, Norfolk and Buckingham all came under the lash. When Lord William Lennox's plagiarisms from Hood and Scott in his novel _The Tuft-hunter_ were exposed, _Punch_ printed this jingling epigram:-- A Duke once declared--and most solemnly too-- That whatever he liked with his own he would do; But the son of a Duke has gone farther, and shown He will do what he likes with what isn't his own! [Sidenote: _Marquesses under the Microscope_] And the marquesses came off even worse. The eccentric Marquess of Waterford is celebrated for his knocker-hunting exploits in the very first number. The Marquess of Hertford--the original of Thackeray's Marquess of Steyne in _Vanity Fair_--is subjected to posthumous obloquy, _à propos_ of the claim of his valet on his executors, who "were compelled to bring the dead Marquess into Court, that the loathsome dead may declare the greater loathsomeness of the living." The Marquess of Londonderry came under the lash not merely as a rapacious coal-owner, but as a bad writer: "the most noble but not the most grammatical Marquess." So again we are informed respecting the Marquess of Normanby's novels that "they have just declared a dividend of 2½d. in the pound, which is being paid at all the butter shops." One has to wait for nearly ten years for acknowledgment of virtue in the marquisate, but then it is certainly handsome. The occasion was the entrance into power of the Derby-Disraeli (or "Dilly-Dizzy") Cabinet:-- THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE AND THE NEW MINISTRY The first act of the Ministry in the House of Lords was done with the worst of grace. The Marquis of Lansdowne took farewell of office and of official life. And who was there, among the new men, to do reverence to the unstudied yet touching ceremony? Nobody, save the Earl of Malmesbury. _The Times_ says, and most truly: