Genre:

Regular Feature—Proceedings, Drollery; Poetry

Subjects:

Politics, Government, Invention, Patents, Quackery, Railways, Accidents, Commerce

    Includes an 'Idyll of the Queen', which represents and discusses the Queen's speech at the start of the new session of Parliament. Asks for the Queen's help in 'useful legislation', including the need to 'mend' the situation regarding 'The patient, thoughtful sage, whose painful toil / Strikes out some grand invention' and 'is left / At the no-mercy of a Patent law / By which the shallow greedy quack's enriched'. (63) Later Punch reverts to its usual interpretation of parliamentary proceedings, which includes a report of the government's decision not to 'legislate about Railway accidents', Thomas Milner-Gibson making the apparently contradictory remarks that there were 'few railway accidents' in 1864, but £174,000 was paid in damages for injury arising from accidents (64).