19 MARCH 1870, Page 13

Papers of a comic vein when dealing with public questions

are apt to forget that their responsibilities are often even more serious than those of their more staid and therefore less impressive contem- poraries. Punch,—which with its pictorial genius wields more power to hurt than any mere newspaper,—is always unscrupulous about Ireland. Its cartoon this week, painting the typical Irish- man in the character of Caliban, makes the type hardly distin- guishable from the gorilla. These are the kind of insults which no race ever yet forgave.