In support of this view it should be remembered that Keene all along refused to accept a fixed salary for his _Punch_ work, and was always paid by the piece. Considering, too, that the subject of the weekly cartoons was (and still is) a matter of general discussion at the Wednesday _Punch_ dinners, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the {130} subject was embarked upon with the authority of the editor, and that other counsels only prevailed after the drawing had reached the stage at which it now appears.[24] This being so, it seems not unlikely that a generous employer would feel himself in some degree answerable for the futile labour to which the artist had been put, and would offer to buy the picture as it stood rather than that the artist should in any way be prejudiced. If this were the case (which does not sound improbable) it throws an interesting and edifying side-light upon the relations existing between the artists and publishers of our great comic paper. [24] Of course Sir John Tenniel was cartoonist in chief, but sometimes the cartoon was duplicated, and on very rare occasions Sir John took a holiday. Against this theory, however, I have the opinion of Sir John Tenniel and Mr. Linley Sambourne that the drawing was done on Keene’s own initiative by way of frontispiece to one of the _Punch_ pocket-books. But this view of the matter I am, with submission, not myself inclined to accept, and for two reasons. First and foremost, the drawing differs in shape from the pocket-book folding frontispieces; and secondly, it was the {131} practice in these yearly productions rather to satirise some social folly or fashion of the period than to deal with matters political or international. In addition to which it does tally in shape with the double-page cartoons of _Punch_ itself, and, as a matter of fact, Keene’s few cartoons were mostly done during the years 1875, 1876, and 1877, when the matter of the Suez Canal was making a new departure in politics—a fact which, as will appear, has some bearing upon the matter before us. So much for the circumstances connected with the production and proposed destination of the picture. Let us now consider its subject and the probable reason of its suppression.