Here the satire is aimed at the futile leniency of the Chief Secretary to all disturbers of the peace. Three weeks later, alluding to the prohibited importation of arms into Ireland, _Punch_ ridicules the inconsistency of Sir Edward Carson, who, armed himself to the teeth, is warning Customs Officer Birrell to search Mr. Redmond, a harmless-looking passenger, carrying a small dispatch-case: "That's just the sort of bag he'd have a couple of howitzers concealed in." Mr. Bonar Law's support of Sir Edward Carson's campaign is ingeniously shown in "The New Brunswicker"--after Millais' well-known picture--deserting the Tariff Reform lady, "but only for a time," in order to go to the Ulster Wars. [Illustration: "OLIVER ASKS FOR" LESS JOHN BULL (fed up): "Please, sir, need I have quite so many good things?" MR. LLOYD GEORGE: "Yes, you must; and there's more to come."] The last cartoon of the year, "The Third Stage," exhibits the main legislative preoccupations of the year in the form of a coach with the three Bills--Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment and Plural Voting--seated abreast under the hood of the Parliament Act with 1914 as postilion. _Punch's_ view was that the electorate as a whole were somewhat weary of the legislative activities of the Government. In 1912 he had represented John Bull as Oliver asking not for more but less; in the summer of 1913 he showed John Bull disappointed with Mr. Lloyd George's "rare and refreshing fruit" on the ground that it contained "too many pips," _à propos_ of Mr. Asquith's promise to amend the Insurance Act. The conscientious M.P., in the cartoon of a few weeks later, who presents himself at the Pay Office expressing his fear that he won't "really be earning his salary this year with no autumn session," is bluntly told by Paymaster Bull, "sick with legislation," not to worry about that. "You go and take a nice long holiday; the country needs it." There were other causes of weariness besides excessive legislation. The Marconi scandal was an incubus which lay heavily on the Government throughout the year. In the early stages of the inquiry, _Punch_ showed Rumour presenting her season-ticket, and disgusted at being denied admittance, as the Committee were about to "get to business." The amount of space devoted to the question in the Press is satirized by the announcement of the forthcoming publication of "The Marconi Affair in a Nut-shell," by Messrs. Garvin and Maxse, in 968 pages. When the Report appeared, _Punch_ thought the whitewash had been laid on too thick: "More Whitewash!" said the Falconer,[2] Doing the Party trick; "Throw it about in bucketfuls; Some of it's bound to stick." "Very poor art!" the public cried; "You've laid it on too thick!"