ted by foreigners is the very reason why we
should persist in our own. What is it that makes them so eager to take
our money, if not its acknowledged superiority to theirs?

The democratic, indeed the levelling character of the decimal agitation
is obvious from one remarkable fact, which, may, perhaps, however, be
new to our readers. It is notorious that the lower classes are addicted
to the use of slang or flash language, especially in connection with
pugilism. Now we have already had introduced a coin of foreign
denomination, but domestic orthography. We allude to the piece of money
termed a florin, a word which, as spelt by the populace--as many of them
as can spell at all--signifies the act of knocking or being knocked
down. It is proposed that one of the new-fangled coins shall bear the
yet more vulgar appellation of a mil; which in the same vocabulary
signifies a fistic encounter.

From a Parliamentary Commission subservient to a Downing Street gang,
thus evidently deriving the nomenclature of their projected coinage on
the one hand from Continental Jews, Papists, and Infidels; and on the
other from the BRUMMAGEM CHICKEN and the TIPTON SLASHER, what can we
expect but the overthrow of all our ancient institutions, unless the
blow which they are about to aim at all that we hold tender, be parried
by a determined exertion of the art of self-defence?

* * * * *

A REGULAR PUMP.--An eminent teetotaller being requested by "a few of his
admirers" to sit for his portrait, consented, on condition that it
should be taken in water-colours.

* * * * *

[Illustration: A REMINISCENCE OF CHOBHAM--DELIGHTFUL EFFECTS OF A
CANNONADE.]

* * * * *

MR. PETERLOO BROWN'S EXAMINATION OF THE OXFORD STATUTES.

"DEAR MR. PUNCH,

"I venture but once again to trouble you with a few remarks; and, as I
am looking forward to my lad matriculating this next October, I shall be
glad of your speedy advice as to whether I ought to send him to a place
where he will have to swear to observe Statutes like those I have spoken
of, and those I am now about to mention.

"The next Statute after 'the herb Nicotiana,' is about the closing of
the College gates at 9 o'clock, and says, that if circumstances should
call for it (_si res ita postulet_), the Heads of the Houses shall then
go round to each chamber (_perlustratis singulorum cubiculis_), to see
if