The appeal to the Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke of Connaught to visit Ireland, signed, "Larry Doolan of the Irish Jaunting Car," is shorn of all its cogency by the Transpontine Donnybrook Fair language in which it is couched. _Punch_ has been a frequent offender in this respect; and also in his representations of the Irish peasant. It did not really help the cause of Unionism to portray Fenians and Land Leaguers with baboon-like faces. Dan O'Connell, whom _Punch_ again evoked from the shades, this time to play Virgil to Gladstone's Dante in the Irish "Inferno," though he was a potato-faced Irishman, would have resented this method of criticism. As a matter of fact, _Punch_ was so seriously remonstrated with for his Irish cartoons that he published a long article in self-defence and justification of his methods, maintaining that he never hit the weaker side because it _was_ the weaker side, but because that side at the time appeared to be in the wrong:-- [Illustration: THE IRISH "INFERNO" "Death, violent death, and painful wounds upon his neighbour he inflicts; and wastes, by devastation, pillage, and the flames, his substance."--Dante, Canto XI.] [Sidenote: _Punch and Ireland_] The Ogreish character is the embodiment of the spirit of Lawlessness, of Anarchy, and of that Communism which, by its recent No Rent manifesto, has now drawn down upon itself the just condemnation of such men as the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel. Houghing and mutilating dumb animals, maiming men and women, and shooting defenceless victims, are ugly crimes, and the embodiment of them in one single figure cannot be made too hideous or too repulsive. On the other hand, _Punch_ has consistently and persistently kept before the public his ideal classic figure of Hibernia, graceful, gentle, tender, loving but "distressful," as being more or less in fear of that Ogre, her evil genius, from whose bondage may she soon be free; and then, mistress of herself, with peace and plenty in her land, blessed with wise Administration and Local Government, in happy and unbroken union with her sister, England, with a regal residence in her midst, may she see the emerald gem of the Western World set glittering in the crown of one who will be no longer a stranger. _Punch_ was moved to return to the subject in September, 1882, in order to repel the attacks made on him by the _Spectator_ and the _Nineteenth Century_. The latter had not been sparing of rebuke:-- "No savages have ever been so mercilessly held up to loathing mockery as the Irish peasants by the one comic paper in Europe which has been most honourably distinguished for its restraint and decorum and good nature."