The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-03 00:00:00

work.

"SLANGIVANGING."

" Slangwanging" is usually supplemented by
fisticuffs; and as " slangwanging" has become
quite the fashion in England, fisticuffs is now ex-
tensively practised. Mr. Donneley is a represen-
tative in the former art, and General Butler has
few equals—but there is here also an establishment
which turns out first-rate professors, and if
they continue to progress so favourably, Witt-la-
bia will have no advantage in this respect
over cousin Britannia. The House of Commons
is becoming a bear-garden, an example other
assemblies have not been slow to follow. In Guild-
hall, on Monday, the Lord Mayor presided over a
meeting called to enable the citizens to state their
opinions upon the Dis-establisment of the Irish
Church Bill. The room was densely crowded, and
the way the people took of expressing their senti-
ments was by howling, hooting, cheering, and hiss-
ing. A resolution was offered and an amendment
moved, but nothing could be heard in the uproar.
A placard with the word Amendment printed on it
was handed to Alderman Sir William Rose, who
placed it on his hat, when some one snatched at it,
which Sir William resisted, and resented. A des-
perate struggle ensued, and the platform became
the scene of a free fight. The war raged around
the Lord Mayor, who received a heavy blow in
the stomach. Then was seen the extraordinary
spectacle of Churchmen assembled to express
an opinion on a Church question, hitting
wildly out right and left, and a show even more
curious in a body of Loudon aldermen pitching
into each other in a ring or platform surrounded by
their fellow citizens. The heavy blow on the sto-
mach appears, as might well have been expected, to
have doubled the Lord Mayor up, the stomach of
that dignified functionarybeing perhaps lessadapted
than those of ordinary mortat.s for such experi-
ments. Aldermen are known to strain their diges-
tive powers to the utmost ; and a citadel thus as-
sailed within, cannot be expected to bear an outside
attack. A punch is all very well when administered
as a liquid to a Lord Mayor after turtle soup, but a
punch as thus administered must have been resented
in the highest degree in the interior. Sir Win. Rose
received two blows in the chest, but there an alder-
man is comparatively secure, the vulnerable place
not being searched out with the malignity exhibited
towards his lordship. The alderman who got tapped
on the head showed great powers of endurance, for
the Board is known to be solid in that locality.
From this truly Christian scene we may carry our
readers to the banks of the Thames, where the Vo-
lunteers in wild confusion were endeavouring to
cross the bridge at Datchet. General Lindsay or-
dered the 19th Aliddlesex Rifles to deploy a com-
pany across the path to stop the rush, but the path
of the gallant Volunteers was not thus to be barred,
so the company was set upon, and Colonel Hughes,
who tried to restore order, was threatened with
being pulled from his horse. General Lindsay, who
rode up, was hissed and hooted, and driven pell
inell off the field for rating the men, while Colonel
Wright, the Deputy-Inspector of Reserve Forces,
was pushed into the river. At Aldershott an officer
of the Carabineers, according to the Army and
Navy Gazette, amused himself last week by knock-
ing out four of the teeth of a brother officer, beat-
ing his nose fiat on his face, and destroying the
sight of one of his eyes, at the very moment, too,
when the artiste who undertakes to repair such
damages and to make people " beautiful for ever"
had been committed for trial. The Pall AMU
Gazette, in noticing this affair, makes a greater
mistake than an American paper in discussing
the 33rd Regiment. It speaks of the Carabineers
as having been made famous by the courts-martial
at Mhow and Aldershott, whereas it was the

Inniskilling Dragoons. The Pall Mall is perhaps
not aware that the 6th Dragoon Guards are the
Carabineers, who had no more to do with the court-
martial at Mhow than the Pall Mall had ; and the

6th Dragoons are the Inniskillings, the num-
ber being the same, but the regiments wholly dif-
ferent. The New I oil: Citizen alluded to the 33d
as the Irish Regiment which did the whole fighting
in Abyssinia. We never heard of the 33d as an Irish
regitnenr, nor did they ever themselves, although
there may be a good many Irishmen in it.
But the futioulfwg does not seem to be Named to

Guildhall and the mess-rooms, for the enterprising
officers sometimes carry their operations into the '
streets and make the myrmidons of the law them-
selves the victims in default of others of her Ma-
esty's lieges. A case has just been heard in Dublin,
by which it appears that two young officers of the
Guards have been knocking policemen down and
banging them about, and not content with this
taking the law of them too. Nor are the precincts
of the great London Clubs secure. Only this
week, at one of the greatest of these establish-
ments, two visitors by accident met in the hall,
flew at each other, and flattened noses and spilled
" claret" till forcibly separated. It is becoming,
as we observed, quite the fashion, and we presume
will be followed by duelling, unless the law be
sternly enforced, for men begin by loosening re-
straint, whence arises slangwanging, anal proceed
to fisticuffs, and then to pistols. Society should
not permit; its rules to be violated with impunity.
If people, as a body, do not visit with dis-
pleasure those who outrage the rules of decorum,
individuals are compelled to defen I themselves, for
the law cannot reach all such cases, and the natural
end is the revival of the oil system of self-defence.
The House of Commons leading in this laxity, its
example will be quickly followed, and one of the
accomplishments necessory to a gentleman will be-
come the art of boxing.—Anglo-Antenean Times.