cartoon of "Murder as the King Maker." [Sidenote: _Ireland, Army Reform, and India_] Home politics fill a larger space in 1903 in _Punch's_ pages than for some years previously. Remedial legislation in Ireland inspires the cartoon of Mr. Balfour as St. Patrick--a saint invaluable to the harassed cartoonist--driving out the snakes of sedition. The basis of Mr. Wyndham's Land Purchase Act is well shown in the cartoon illustrating the financial relations of the two countries. Tenant and landlord both present money-boxes labelled "Land Purchase" to John Bull, asking him to "put a thrifle in them"; John Bull scratches his head, but he pays all the same. The difficulties of Mr. Brodrick in securing national support for Army Reform are set forth in the verses on "The Unhappy Warrior" (after Wordsworth), and the cartoon "Ready, aye unready," with John Bull asleep on sentry duty--_à propos_ of the Report of the Royal Commission on the South African war. A little later, John Bull's short memory is satirized in his protest against the size of his new watch-dog. Forgetting that he had clamoured for increase, he now declares that he cannot afford him. At the opening of the year _Punch_ had lavishly chronicled the glories of the Delhi Durbar. "The Pilgrims to the East" included three members of his staff, who did justice to the occasion both with pen and pencil, and Sambourne's fine cartoon, "_Vivat Imperator_," forms an instructive pendant and palinode to _Punch's_ anti-imperialist misgivings of 1876, when he regarded the assumption of the new title as a piece of shoddy Disraelian Orientalism. Lord Salisbury's death in 1903 removed a great figure, whose prestige has grown with the knowledge available in later years. We have learned to revise the old view of his political stature as compared with that of Lord Beaconsfield, and to reject the often-quoted but quite erroneous saying attributed to Bismarck that he was "a lath painted to resemble iron." _Punch's_ memorial tribute admits that he "nothing common did or mean":-- When Lord Salisbury, resigning the Premiership, practically retired from public life, a gap was made in the House of Lords no living man might fill. Only once has he returned to the scene of memorable labour. He came with the rest of the cloaked Peers to pay homage to King Edward the Seventh when first he seated himself on the throne which he had long regarded from the point of view of the Cross Benches. There was hope that the ex-Premier would, from time to time, still give the House and the country the advantage of his sagacious counsel, the pleasure of listening to his brilliant speech. But, like the other tall man in another chair, "his heart was worn with work." He was sick of the sometimes mean rivalry of political life, and felt he had earned his leisure.