The debate on the Address in the session of 1889 was prolonged and acrimonious. Early in March, however, Lord George Hamilton moved a resolution, on which the Naval Defence Bill was founded, authorizing an expenditure of £21,500,000 on the Navy. The measure, of course, met with some opposition from various quarters, but public opinion was manifestly in its favour, and it received the Royal Assent before the end of May. Throughout this campaign it is interesting to note how the personality of the German Emperor obtrudes itself as a disquieting factor in the international race in armaments. At the close of 1891 a lady with alleged abnormal "magnetic" power was giving performances at the Alhambra, and _Punch_ adapts the incident in a cartoon suggested by the Kaiser's _dictum_--inscribed in the Visitors' Book of the City Council at Munich--_Suprema Lex Regis Voluntas_. The accompanying verses on "The Little Germania Magnate" are derisive, not to say abusive, with their references to "Behemoth Billy," "Panjandrum-plus-Cæsar," "Thraso" and "Vulcan-Apollo." _Punch_ was evidently inclined to regard the German Emperor as one of those "impossible people" who, as _The Times_ had suggested in a happy phrase, ought to "retire into fiction." Unfortunately he remained a fact, and was not to be killed by _Punch's_ mouth. MEN AND MASTERS: WORK AND WAGES In the preceding volume I endeavoured to trace and account for the waning of _Punch's_ reforming zeal and democratic ardour, and to illustrate his gradual movement from Left to Right Centre in the 'fifties, 'sixties, and early 'seventies. Many abuses had been remedied, the barriers of class privilege had been broken down, the cleavage between the "Two Nations" was less glaring, national prosperity had increased, the ladder of learning had been set up by Forster's Education Act. Free Trade and Gladstonian finance had eased the burden of the working man and the taxpayer. England was not a Utopia, but she had travelled far from the days of the Hungry 'Forties. In December, 1883, the late Sir Robert Giffen, one of the most trustworthy and deservedly respected of the much abused tribe of statisticians, published a comparative table of the consumption of the agricultural labourer in 1840 and 1881. _Punch's_ comment takes the form of an imaginary letter from a farm hand under the heading of "Food and Figures":-- "Sir, Maister _Punch_,