This friendly greeting, anticipating without misgiving the extension of Labour representation, must not blind us to the fact that throughout the period under review _Punch_ was gradually becoming more and more confirmed in his championship of the middle class as the backbone of the country, the real power of the nation. The appeal in support of the funds raised to support the children of Ernest Jones, the Chartist poet, who died in 1868, is generously worded. But Chartism was long extinct, and Jones, a man of good family, had quarrelled with most of the other leaders on his release from gaol in 1850, and his former colleagues had "freely denied both his disinterestedness and his sincerity." Landor had pronounced his verses noble, and _Punch_ appealed to both Conservatives and Liberals on the broad ground that a brave man had died poor. The well-deserved rebuke administered to "van-demons," "persons whose only notion of enjoyment consists in getting drunk, and then howling songs and playing horns as they drive homeward from their drinking-bout," can be paralleled from the protests repeatedly uttered in 1920 against the char-à-banc nuisance with its attendant "bellowing and braying." But a much more combative note is struck in the verses on the tendency to kow-tow to the working man published in 1872, at a time when the rise in prices, especially in that of coal, and the hardships of the middle classes and the small income-tax payer coincided with unusual prosperity among the working classes and particularly amongst the miners:-- "WHY SHOULD THE POOR BE FLATTERED?" _Hamlet_, Act v., Sc. 1. "Why should the Poor be flattered?" Art foolish, Hamlet, trow? All else are torn and tattered, None else are flattered now. Your Clown, our race accusing, Declared our wits astray: We beat him at abusing Ourselves. Behold our way! Our Queen mis-spends her income, Her Court's all fashion's slaves, The Lords are feeble Ninkum- Poops, and the Commons, knaves. Our soldiers are no fighters, Our sailors cannot sail, Our bishops shame their mitres, Our merchants cheat and fail. * * * * * Our architects are Vandals, Unfit to rear a stone; Our music-writers Handels To no ears but their own. Only the so-called Worker, The Stalwart Son of Toil, Never from that a shirker, Never in brawl or broil. That sober, saving Being, The nation's "heart and core," Him we are all agreeing To flatter--and much more. * * * * * "Why should the poor be flattered?" You pause for a reply-- But, if our brains are battered, Dear Hamlet, don't ask why.