Pamphlets and Parodies on Political Subjects
by William Hone · English · Gutenberg #44520 · 337,907 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Pamphlets and Parodies on Political Subjects
Author: William Hone
Illustrator: George Cruikshank
Release date: December 26, 2013 [eBook #44520]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44520
Credits: Produced by David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAMPHLETS AND PARODIES ON POLITICAL SUBJECTS ***
PAMPHLETS AND PARODIES ON POLITICAL SUBJECTS
By William Hone,
With Numerous Wood Cuts, by Cruikshank
[Illustration: 010]
[Illustration: 011]
{003}
LONDON:
I. CHIDLEY, J 51, GOSWELL STREET,.
{005}
THE POLITICAL HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.
"A straw--thrown up to show which way the wind blows."
WITH THIRTEEN CUTS
[Illustration: 013]
Fifty-first Edition
London:
Printed By And For William Hone,
Ludgate Hill.
1821.
ONE SHILLING.
{006]
--"Many, whose sequester'd lot
Forbids their interference, looking on,
Anticipate perforce some dire event;
And, seeing the old castle of the state,
That promis'd once more firmness, so assail'd,
That all its tempest-beaten turrets shake,
Stand motionless expectants of its fall."
Cowper.
NOTE. Each Motto that follows, is from Cowper's "Task."
{007}
THE AUTHOR'S DEDICATION TO HIS POLITICAL GODCHILD.
To
Doctor Slop,
In Acknowledgment Of
Many Public Testimonials Of His Filial Gratitude;
And To The Nursery Of Children Six Feet High, His Readers,
For The Delight And Instruction Of Their Uninformed Minds
This Juvenile Publication
Is Affectionately Inscribed,
By
The Doctor's Political Godfather,
The Author.
**The Publication wherein the Author of "The Political House that Jack
Built" conferred upon Dr. SLOP the lasting distinction of his name, was
a Jeu d'Esprit, entitled "Buonapartephobia, or cursing made easy to the
meanest capacity"--It is reprinted, and may be had of the Publisher,
Price One Shilling.
[Illustration: 016]
{009}
THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT
[Illustration: 017]
THIS IS
THE WEALTH
that lay
In the House that Jack built.
{010}
[Illustration: 018]
----"A race obscene,
Spawn'd in the muddy beds of Nile, came forth,
Polluting Egypt: gardens, fields, and plains,
Were cover'd with the pest;
The croaking nuisance lurk'd in every nook;
Nor palaces, nor even chambers,'scap'd;
And the land stank --so num'rous was the fry."
THESE ARE
THE VERMIN
That plunder the Wealth,
That lay in the House,
That Jack built.
{011}
[Illustration: 019]
THIS IS
THE THING,
that in spite of new Acts,
And attempts to restrain it,
by Soldiers or Tax,
Will _poison_ the Vermin,
That plunder the Wealth,
That lay in the House,
That Jack built.
{012}
[Illustration: 020]
THIS IS
THE PUBLIC INFORMER,
who
Would pull down the _Thing,_
that, in spite of new Acts,
And attempts to restrain it,
by Soldiers or Tax,
Will poison the Vermin, that plunder the Wealth,
That lay in the House, that Jack built.
{013}
[Illustration: 021]
THESE ARE
THE REASONS OF LAWLESS POWER,
That back the Public Informer,
who
Would put down the Thing,
that, in spite of new Acts,
And attempts to restrain it,
by Soldiers or Tax,
Will _poison_ the Vermin,
That plunder the W ealth,
That lay in the House,
That Jack built.
{014}
[Illustration: 022]
This is THE MAN--all shaven and shorn,
All cover'd with Orders--and all forlorn;
{015}
THE DANDY OF SIXTY,
Who bows with a grace,
And has _taste_ in wigs, collars,
cuirasses, and lace;
Who, to tricksters and fools,
leaves the State and its treasure,
And, when Britain's in tears,
sails about at his pleasure,
Who spurn'd from his presence
the Friends of his youth,
And now has not one
who will tell him the truth;
Who took to his counsels,
in evil hour,
The Friends to the Reasons
of lawless Power;
That back the Public Informer
who
Would put down the _Thing_,
that, in spite of new Acts,
And attempts to restrain it,
by Soldiers or Tax,
Will _poison_ the Vermin,
That plunder the Wealth,
That lay in the House,
That Jack built.
{016}
[Illustration: 024]
THESE ARE
THE PEOPLE
all tatter'd and torn,
Who curse the day
wherein they were born,
On account of Taxation
too great to be borne,
And pray for relief,
from night to morn:
Who, in vain, Petition
in every form,
{017}
Who, peaceably Meeting
to ask for Reform,
Were sabred by Yeomanry Cavalry,
who
Were thank'd by THE MAN,
all shaven and shorn,
All cover'd with Orders--
and all forlorn;
THE DANDY OF SIXTY,
who bows with a grace,
And has taste in wigs, collars,
cuirasses, and lace:
"Who, to tricksters and fools,
leaves the state and its treasure,
And, when Britain's in tears,
sails about at his pleasure:
Who spurn'd from his presence
the Friends of his youth,
And now' has not one
who will tell him the truth;
Who took to his counsels, in evil hour,
The Friends to the Reasons of law less Power,
That back the Public Informer, who
Would put down the _Thing_, that, in spite of new Acts,
And attempts to restrain it, by Soldiers or Tax,
Will _poison_ the Vermin, that plunder the Wealth,
That lay in the House, that Jack built.
{018}
[Illustration: 026]
This is THE DOCTOR
of _Circular_ fame,
A Driv'ller, a Bigot, a Knave
without shame:
{019}
And _that's_ DERRY DOWN TRIANGLE
by name,
From the Land of misrule,
and half-hanging, and flame:
And _that_ is THE SPOUTER OF FROTH
BY THE HOUR,
The worthless colleague
of their infamous power:
W ho dubb'd _him_ 'the Doctor'
whom now he calls 'brother,'
And, to get at his Place,
took a shot at the other;
Who haunts their _Bad House_,
a base living to earn,
By playing Jack-pudding, and Ruffian,
in turn;
Who bullies, for those
whom he bullied before;
Their _Flash_-man, their Bravo,
a son of a --------;
The hate of the People,
all tatter'd and torn,
Who curse the day
wherein they were born,
On account of Taxation
too great to be borne,
And pray for relief
from night to morn;
{020}
Who, in vain, petition
in every form:
Who peaceably Meeting
to ask for Reform,
Were sabred by Yeomanry Cavalry,
who
Were thank'd by THE MAN,
all shaven and shorn,
All cover'd with Orders--
and all forlorn;
THE DANDY OF SIXTY,
who bows with a grace,
And has _taste_ in wigs, collars,
cuirasses and lace:
Who to tricksters and fools,
leaves the State and its treasure,
And, when Britain's in tears,
sails about at his pleasure:
Who spurn'd from his presence
the Friends of his youth,
And now has not one
who will tell him the truth;
Who took to his counsels, in evil hour,
The Friends to the Reasons of lawless Power;
That back the Public Informer, who
Would put down the _Thing_, that, inspite of new Acts,
And attempts to restrain it, by Soldiers or Tax,
Will _poison_ the Vermin, that plunder the Wealth
That lay in the House, that Jack built.
{021}
[Illustration: 029]
This WORD is the Watchword--
the talisman word,
That the WATERLOO-MAN's to crush
with his sword;
{022}
But, if shielded by Norfolk
and Bedford's alliance,
It will set both his sword,
and him at defiance;
If Fitzwilliam, and Grosvenor, and
Albemarle aid it,
And assist its best Champions,
who then dare invade it?
'Tis the terrible WORD OF FEAR,
night and morn,
To the _Guilty Trio_,
all cover'd with scorn;
First, to the Doctor,
of Circular fame,
A Driv'ller, a Bigot, a Knave
without shame:
And next, Derry Down Triangle
by name,
From the Land of Mis-rule,
and Half-hanging, and Flame:
And then, to the Spouter of Froth
by the hour,
The worthless colleague
of their infamous power;
Who dubb'd _him_ 'the Doctor,'
whom now he calls 'brother',
And to get at his Place,
took a shot at the other;
{023]
Who haunts their _Bad House_,
a base living to earn,
By playing Jack-Pudding, and Ruffian,
in turn;
Who bullies for those,
whom he bullied before;
Their _Flash_-man, their Bravo,
a son of a --------;
The hate of the People,
all tatter'd and torn,
Who curse the day
wherein they were born
On account of Taxation
too great to be borne,
And pray for relief,
from night to morn;
Who, in vain, Petition
in every form,
Who peaceably Meeting,
to ask for Reform,
Were sabred by Yeomanry Cavalry,
who,
Were thank'd by _THE MAN_,
all shaven and shorn,
All cover'd with Orders--
and all forlorn;
THE DANDY OF SIXTY,
who bows with a grace,
{024}
And has _taste_ in wigs, collars,
cuirasses and lace;
Who, to tricksters and fools,
leaves the State and its treasure,
And, when Britain's in tears,
sails about at his pleasure;
Who spurn'd from his presence
the Friends of his youth,
And now has not one
who will tell him the Truth;
Who took to his counsels,
in evil hour,
The friends to the Reasons
of lawless Power;
That back the Public Informer,
who
Would put down the Thing
that, in spite of new Acts,
And attempts to restrain it
by Soldiers or Tax,
Will _poison_ the Vermin,
That plunder the Wealth,
That lay in the House,
That Jack built.
END OF THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.
{025}
[Illustration: 033]
THE CLERICAL MAGISTRATE.
THIS PRIEST,
made 'according to Law,'
{026}
Who, on being ordain'd, vow'd, by rote, like a daw,
That he felt himself call'd, by the Holy Spirit,
To teach men the Kingdom of Heaven to merit;
That, to think of the World and the flesh he'd cease,
And keep men in quietness, love, and peace;
And, making thus his profession and boast,
Receiv'd, from the Bishop, the Holy Ghost:
Then--not having the fear of God before him--
Is sworn in a Justice, and one of the _Quorum_;
'Gainst his spiritual Oath, puts his Oath of the Bench,
And, instead of his Bible, examines a wench;
Gets Chairman of Sessions--leaves his flock, sick
or dying,
To license Ale-houses--and assist in the trying
Of prostitutes, poachers, pickpockets, and thieves;--
Having _charged_ the Grand Jury, dines with them,
and gives
"Church and King without day-light gets _fresh_,
and puts in--
To the stocks vulgar people, who fuddle with gin:
Stage-coach men, and toll-men, convicts as he pleases;
And beggars and paupers incessantly teazes:
Commits starving vagrants, and orders Distress
On the Poor, for their Rates--signs warrants to press,
And beats up for names to a Loyal Address:
Would indict, for Rebellion, those who Petition:
And, all who look peaceable, try for Sedition;
{027}
If the People were legally Meeting, in quiet,
Would pronounce it decidedly--_sec. Stut_.--a Riot,
And order the Soldiers 'to aid and assist,'
That is--kill the helpless, who cannot resist.
He, though vowing 'from all worldly studies to
cease,'
Breaks the Peace of the Church, to be Justice of Peace;
Breaks his vows madeto Heaven: a pander for power;
A Perjurer--a guide to the People no more;
On God turns his back,
when he turns the State's Agent;
And damns his own Soul,
to be friends with the --------.
THE END.
[Illustration: 035]
{028}
{029}
[Illustration: 037]
THE QUEEN'S MATRIMONIAL LADDER,
A National Toy With Fourteen Step Scenes;
And Illustrations In Verse,
With Eighteen Other Cuts.
By The Author Of The Political House That Jack Built."
{030}
'It is a wonderful thing to consider the strength of Princes' wills when
they are bent to have their Pleasure fulfilled, wherein no reasonable
persuasion' will serve their turn: how little do they regard the
dangerous sequels, that may ensue as well to themselves as to their
Subjects. And amongst all things there is nothing that makes them more
wilful than Carnal Love, and various affecting of voluptuous desires."
Cavendish's Memoirs of Curd. Wolsey
{031}
[Illustration: 039]
QUALIFICATION.
In love, and in drink, and o'ertoppled by debt
With women, with wine, and with duns on the fret.
{032}
[Illustration: 040]
DECLARATION.
The Prodigal Son, by his perils surrounded,
Vex'd, harass'd, bewilder'd, asham'd, and con-
founded,
Fled for help to his Father,
confessed his ill doing,
And begged for salvation
from stark staring ruin;
The sire urged--"The People
your debts have twice paid,
"And, to ask a third time,
even Pitt is afraid;
"But he shall if you'll marry, and lead a new life,--
"You've a cousin in Germany--make her your
wife!"
{033}
[Illustration: 041]
ACCEPTATION.
From the high halls of Brunswick, all youthful and
gay,
From the hearth of her fathers, he lured her away:
How joy'd she in coming--
how smiling the bower;
flow sparkling their nuptials--
how welcome her dower.
Ah! short were her pleasures--full soon came her
cares--
Her husbandless bride-bed was wash'd with her
tears.
{034}
[Illustration: 042]
ALTERATION.
Near a million of debts gone,
all gone were her charms--
What! an Epicure have _his own_ wife
in his arms?
She was not to his _taste_--
what car'd _he_ for the 'form,'
'To love and to cherish'
could not mean reform:
'To love' meant, of course, nothing else
but neglect;--
'To cherish' to leave her,
and shew disrespect
{035}
[Illustration: 043]
IMPUTATION.
Was it manly, when widow'd,
to spy at her actions;
To listen to eaves-droppers,
whisp'ring detractions:
And, like an old Watchman,
with faults to conceal,
Get up a _false Charge_,
as a proof of his zeal?
If desertion was base, Oh base be his name,
Who, having deserted, would bring her to sham?
{036}
[Illustration: 044]
EXCULPATION.
Undaunted in spirit, her courage arose,
With encrease of charges, and encrease of foes.
Despising the husband,
who thus had abused her,
She proved to his father,
his son had ill used her:--
Her conduct examin'd, and sifted, shone bright,
Her enemies fled, as the shadows of night
{037}
[Illustration: 045]
EMIGRATION.
Her father and king, while with reason yet blest,
Protected her weakness, and shielded her rest;
Infirmity seizes him, false friends draw near,
Then spies gather round, and malignants appear;
And cajole, wait, watch, insult,
alarm, and betray,
Till from home, and her daughter,
they force her away.
{038}
[Illustration: 046]
REMIGRATION.
Still pursued, when a 'wanderer,'
her child sleeps in death,
And her best friend, in England, her king,
yields his breath;
This gives her new rights--
they neglect and proscribe her;
She threatens returning--they then try to bribe her!
The bullies turn slaves, and, in meanness, fawn on her:
They feel her contempt, and they vow her dishonour;
But she 'steers her own course,' comes indignantly
over,
And the shouts of the nation salute her at Dover!
{039}
[Illustration: 047]
CONSTERNATION.
Ah, what was that groan!--
'twas the Head of the Church,
When he found she was come--
for he dreaded a search
Into what _he_'d been doing:
and sorely afraid, for
What _she_ might find out,
cried '_I'll not have her pray'd for'_;
And the B------ps, obeying their _pious_ Head,
care took
That the name of his wife
should be out of the prayer book!
A BURNING SHAME!"
{040}
[Illustration: 048]
ACCUSATION.
On searching for precedents, much to their dread,
They found that they could n't well cut off her head;
{041}
And the 'House of Incurables' raised a 'Report'
She was not a fit person to live in _his_ Court.
How like an OLD CHARLEY
they then made him stand,
In his lanthorn a _leech_,
the 'Report' in his hand.
'Good folks be so good as not go near that door
'For, though my own wife, she _is_--I could say more
'But it's all in this _Bag_, and there'll be a fine pother,
'I shall get rid of her, and I'll then get another!'
Yet he thought, to himself,--
'twas a thought most distressing,--
'If _she_ should discover
I've been M--ch--ss--g,
'There's an end of the whole!
D----rs C-ns, of course,
'If _my own_ hands are dirty,
won't grant a D------ce!'
He tried to look wise, but he only look'd wild;
The women laugh'd out, and the grave even smiled:
The old frown'd upon him--the children made sport,
And his wife held her _ridicule_ at his 'Report'!
Moral.
_Be warn'd by his fate
Married, single, and all;
Ye elderly Gentlemen,
Pity his fall!_
{042}
[Illustration: 050]
PUBLICATION.
As yon bright orb, that vivifies our ball,
Sees through our system, and illumines all;
{043}
So, sees and shines, our Moral Sun, The Press,
Alike to vivify the mind, and bless;
Sees the rat _Leech_ turn towards Milan's walls,
'Till the black slime betrays him as he crawls;'
Sees, from that recreant, vile, and eunuch-land,
Where felon-perjurers hold their market-stand,
_Cooke_, with his 'cheek of parchment, eye of stone,'
Get up the evidence, to go well down;
Sees who, with eager hands, the Green Bag cram,
And warns the nation of the frightful flam;
Sees Him, for whom they work the treacherous
task,
With face, scarce half conceal'd, behind their mask,
Fat, fifty-eight, and frisky, still a beau,
Grasping a half-made match, by _Leech_-light go;
Led by a passion, prurient, blind, and batter'd,
Lame, bloated, pointless, flameless, age'd and
shatter'd;
Creeping, like Guy Fawkes, to blow up his wife,
Whom, spurn'd in youth, he dogs through after-life.
Scorn'd, exiled, baffled, goaded in distress,
She owes her safety to a fearless Press:
With all the freedom that it makes its own,
It guards, alike, the people and their throne;
While fools with darkling eye-balls shun its gaze,
And soaring villains scorch beneath its blaze.
{044}
[Illustration: 052]
INDIGNATION.
The day will soon come, when 'the Judge and the
Ponderer,'
Will judge between thee, and the charge-daring
'Wanderer
Will say--'Thou who cast the first stone at thy wife,
Art thou without sin, and is spotless _thy_ life?'
Ah! what if _thy_ faults should 'outrival the sloe,'
And thy wife's, beside thine, should look 'whiter
than snow'!
Bethink thee! the old British Lion awoke,
Turns indignant, and treads out thy bag-full of smoke.
Spurn thy minions--the traitors, who counsel thee,
banish;
And the soldiers will quickly forget all their _Spanish!_
{045}
[Illustration: 053]
CORONATION.
Shakspeare says, in King John, it's a curse most
abhorrent,
That '_Slaves_ take the humours of Kings for a warrant.'
A more _useful_ truth never fell from his pen,
If Kings would apply it like sober-bred men.
The Slaves of _your_ will,
will make your reign, in History,
A misrule of force, folly, taxing, and mystery:
Indulging your wish for
what, with law,'s incompatible,
For the present, they've render'd your crown
not come-at-able;
And the tongues of old women and infancy wag,
With, 'He call'd for his crown--and
they gave him the _Bag!_'
{046}
[Illustration: 054]
DEGRADATION.
To this have they brought thee, at last!
{047}
Exposed thee, for all men to see!
Ah, surely, their pandering
shall quickly be past:--
'How wretched their portion
shall be!
'Derision shall strike them
forlorn,
'A mockery that never shall die:
'The curses of hate and the hisses
of scorn,
f Shall follow wherever they fly;
'And proud o'er their ruin
for ever be hurl'd,
'The laughter of triumph,
the jeers of the world!'
THE END
[Illustration: 055]
{048}
[Illustration: 056]
THE JOSS AND HIS FOLLY,
An Extract of an overland Dispatch.
I stare at it from out my casement,
And ask for what is such a place meant.
Byron.
July 29, 1820.
----The queerest of all the queer sights
I've set sight on;--
Is, the _what dye-call'-t thing_, here,
The Folly at Brighton
{049}
The outside--huge teapots,
all drill'd round with holes,
Relieved by extinguishers,
sticking on poles:
The inside--all tea-things,
and dragons, and bells,
The show rooms--_all_ show,
the sleeping rooms--cells.
But the _grand_ Curiosity
's not to be seen--
The owner himself--
an old fat Mandarin;
A patron of painters
who copy designs,
That grocers and tea-dealers
hang up for signs:
Hence teaboard-taste artists
gain rewards and distinction,
Hence his title of 'Teapot'
shall last to extinction.
I saw his great chair
into which he falls--soss--
And sits, in his China Shop,
like a large Joss;
His mannikins round him,
in tea-tray array,
His pea-hens beside him,
to make him seem gay.
{050}
It is said when he sleeps
on his state Eider-down,
And thinks on his Wife,
and about _half_ a Crown;
That he wakes from these horrible dreams in a stew;
And that, stretching his arms out,
he screams, Mrs. Q.!
He's cool'd on the M--ch-ss,
but I'm your debtor
For further particulars--
in a C letter.
You must know that he hates _his own_ wife, to a failing;--
And it's thought, it's to shun her,
he's now gone out
SAILING.
[Illustration: 058]
{051}
{052}
{053}
[Illustration: 061]
THE FORM OF PRAYER, WITH THANKSGIVING TO ALMIGHTY GOD,
To be used daily by all devout People throughout
the Realm, for the Happy Deliverance of Her
Majesty QUEEN CAROLINE From the late most Traitorous Conspiracy.
Eighth Edition.
LONDON:
Printed for WILLIAM HONE, 45, Ludgate Hill; and
sold by all Booksellers in the United Kingdom. 1820. _Price
Six-pence._
{054}
THE ORDER FOR DAILY PRAYER THROUGHOUT THE YEAR.
_At the beginning of Morning and Evening Prayer the
Minister may read with a loud voice some one or more
of these Sentences of the Scriptures that follow. And
then may be said that which is written after the said
Sentences, together with other suitable portions of the
usual Service._
{055}
WHEN the righteous are in authority, the people
rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the
people mourn. _Prov. xxix. 2._
By reason of the multitude of oppressions they make
the oppressed to cry: they cry out by reason of the
arm of the mighty. _Job, xxxv. 9._
If a ruler hearken to lies, all his servants are
wicked. _Prov. xxix. 12._
The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men
are exalted. _Psalm xii. 8._
They are exalted for a little while, but they are
gone and brought low: they are taken out of the way
as all other, and cut off as the tops of green corn.
_Job, xxiv. 24._
A righteous man falling down before the wicked is
as a troubled fountain, and a corrupt spring. _Prov.
xxv. 26._
A wise king scattereth the wicked, and bringeth
the wheel over them. _Prov. xx. 26._
{056}
_This Hymn following may be used; one Verse by the
Priest, and another by the Clerk and People._
O GIVE thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious:
and his mercy endureth for ever. _Psalm cvii. 1.
Let them give thanks whom the Lord hath redeemed:
and delivered from the hand of the enemy. Verse 2._
Many a time have they fought against me from my
youth up. _Psalm cxxix. 1._
_Yea, many a time have they vexed me from my youth
up: but they have not prevailed against me. Verse 2._
They have privily laid their net to destroy me
without a cause: yea, even without a cause have they
made a pit for my soul. _Psalm xxxv. 7._
_They have laid a net for my feet, and pressed down my
soul: they have digged a pit before me, and are fallen
into the midst of it themselves. Psalm lvii. 7._
Great is our Lord, and great is his power: yea,
and his wisdom is infinite. _Psalm cxlvii. 5._
_The Lord setteth up the meek: and bringeth the un-
godly down to the ground. Verse 6._
_Two Psalms appointed in the Book of Common Prayer
to be said on the 29th of each month throughout the year._
PSALM CXL. _Eripe me, Domine._.
DELIVER me, O Lord, from the evil man: and
preserve me from the wicked man.
2 Who imagine mischief in their hearts: and stir
up strife all the day long.
3 They have sharpened their tongues like a ser-
pent: adders' poison is under their lips.
4 Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the un-
godly: preserve me from the wicked men, who are
purposed to overthrow my goings.
{057}
5 The proud have laid a snare for me, and spread
a net abroad with cords: yea, and set traps in my
way.
6 I said unto the Lord, Thou art my God: hear
the voice of my prayers, O Lord.
7 O Lord God, thou strength of my health: thou
hast covered my head in the day of battle.
8 Let not the ungodly have his desire, O Lord:
let not his mischievous imagination prosper, lest they
be too proud.
9 Let the mischief of their own lips fall upon the
head of them: that compass me about.
10 Let hot burning coals fall upon them: let them
be cast into the fire, and into the pit, that they never
rise up again.
11 A man full of words shall not prosper upon the
earth: evil shall hunt the wicked person to overthrow
him.
12 Sure I am that the Lord will avenge the poor:
and maintain the cause of the helpless.
IS The righteous also shall give thanks unto thy
Name: and the just shall continue in thy sight.
PSALM CXLI. _Domine clamavi._
LORD, I call upon thee, haste thee unto me and
consider my voice when I cry unto thee.
2 Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the
incense: and let the lifting up of my hands be an
evening sacrifice.
3 Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth: and
keep the door of my lips.
4 O let not mine heart be inclined to any evil
thing: let me not be occupied in ungodly works with
the men that work wickedness, lest I eat of such
things as please them.
{058}
5 Let the righteous rather smite me friendly: and
reprove me.
6 But let not their precious balms break my head:
yea, I will pray yet against their wickedness.
7 Let their judges be overthrown in stony places:
that they may hear my words, for they are sweet.
8 Our bones lie scattered before the pit: like as
when one breaketh and hevveth wood upon the earth.
9 But mine eyes look unto thee, O Lord God: in
thee is my trust, O cast not out my soul.
10 Keep me from the snare that they have laid for
me: and from the traps of the wicked doers.
11 Let the ungodly fall into their own nets toge-
ther: and let me ever escape them.
_The Suffrages may be as followeth._
Priest. O Lord, save the Queen.
People. Who putteth her trust in thee.
Priest. Send her help from thy holy place.
People. And evermore mightily defend her.
Priest. Let her enemies have no advantage against
her.
People. Let not the wicked approach to hurt her.
_After the Collects_ [for Peace and Deliverance from
our Enemies] _may be said that which followeth._
ALMIGHTY God and heavenly Father, who of thy
gracious providence, and tender mercy towards
us, didst prevent the malice and imaginations of our
enemies, by discovering and confounding their horrible
and wicked Enterprize, plotted and intended to have
been executed against the Queen and the whole State
of _England_, for the subversion of the Government
and Religion established among us; and didst like-
wise wonderfully conduct thy Servant Queen _Caroline_,
and bring her safely into _England_, and preserve us
from the attempts of our enemies to bereave us of our
religion and laws: We most humbly praise and mag-
nify thy most glorious Name for thy unspeakable
goodness towards us, expressed in both these acts of
thy mercy. Let the consideration of this thy re-
peated goodness, O Lord, work in us true repentance,
that iniquity may not be our ruin. And increase in
us more and more a lively faith and love, fruitful in
all holy obedience; that thou mayest still continue
thy favour, with the light of thy Gospel, to us and
our posterity for evermore. _Amen._
{059}
_Prayer._
ALMIGHTY God, who hast in all ages shewed
thy Power and Mercy in the protection of
righteous States from the wicked conspiracies, and
malicious practices of all the enemies thereof: We
yield thee our unfeigned thanks and praise, for the
wonderful and mighty deliverance of our gracious
Queen CAROLINE, by cruel treachery appointed as
a sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and
savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages.
From this unnatural conspiracy, not our merit, but
thy mercy; not our foresight, but thy providence
delivered us: And therefore not unto us, O Lord,
not unto us, but unto thy Name be ascribed all
honour and glory, in all Churches of the saints, from
generation to generation. _Amen._
_Instead of the Prayer_ [In time of War and Tu-
mults] _may be used this Prayer following._
{060}
ETERNAL God, and our most mighty Protector,
we thy unworthy servants do humbly present
ourselves before thy Majesty, acknowledging thy
power, wisdom, and goodness, in preserving the
Queen from the destruction intended against her.
Make us, we beseech thee, truly thankful for this,
and for all other thy great mercies towards us; par-
ticularly we bless thee for giving Her Majesty a safe
arrival here, and for making all opposition fall before
her. We beseech thee to protect and defend her
from all treasons and conspiracies; Preserve her in
thy faith, fear, and love; prosper her with long hap-
piness here on earth; and crown her with everlasting
glory hereafter. _Amen._
_The following may be said or sung, one Verse by the
Priest, another by the Clerk and People._
Grant the Queen a long life: and make her glad
with the joy of thy countenance. _Psalm Ixi. 6._ and
xxi. 6.
_Let her dwell before thee for ever: O prepare thy
loving mercy and faithfulness, that they may preserve her._
Psalm lxi. 7.
In her time let the righteous flourish: and let peace
be in all our borders. _Psalm Ixxii. 7_. and cxlii. 14.
_As for her enemies, clothe them with shame: but upon
herself let her crown flourish._ Psalm cxxxii. 19.
_Also this._
Thou art the God that hast no pleasure in wicked-
ness: neither shall any evil dwell with thee. _Psalm
v. 4._
_Thou wilt destroy them that speak leasing: the Lord
abhors both the blood-thirsty and deceitful man._ ver: 6.
O how suddenly do they consume: perish, and
come to a fearful end! _Psalm_ lxxiii. 18.
_Yea, even like as a dream, when one awaketh: so
didst thou make their image to vanish out of the city._
ver. 19.
_This Sentence may be read at the Offertory._
{061}
Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the
Prophets. _St. Matt._ vii. 12.
_Also may be profitably read these Sentences._
There is a generation that are pure in their own
eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.
_Prov._ xxx. 12.
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! _Isaiah_,
v. 20. '
Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for
ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter.
_Matt_, xxiii. 25.
But your inside is full of ravening and wickedness.
_Luke_, xi. 39.
Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men
that walk over them are not aware of them. _Luke,_
xi. 44.
His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself,
and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins.
_Prov._ v. 22.
He shall die without instruction; and in the great-
ness of his folly he shall go astray. _Prov_. v. 23.
The congregation of hypocrites shall be desolate
and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.
_Job_, xv. 34.
_After the Prayer_ [For the whole State of Christ's
Church, &c.] _this Collect following may be used._
{062}
ALMIGHTY God and heavenly Father, who, of
thine infinite and unspeakable goodness towards
us, didst in a most extraordinary and wonderful man-
ner disappoint and overthrow the wicked designs of
those traitorous, heady, and high-minded men, who,
under the pretence of Religion and thy most holy
Name, had contrived, and well-nigh effected the utter
destruction of thy Servant CAROLINE, our beloved
Queen: as we do this day most heartily and devoutly
adore and magnify thy glorious Name for this thine
infinite goodness already vouchsafed to us; so do we
most humbly beseech thee to continue thy grace and
favour towards us, that no such dismal calamity may
ever again fall upon us. Infatuate and defeat all the
secret counsels of deceitful and wicked men against
us. Abate their pride, asswage their malice, and
confound their devices. With judgment and justice
cut off all such workers of iniquity, as turn Religion
into Rebellion, and Faith into Faction; that they
may never prevail against us, nor triumph in the
ruin of the Monarchy. Protect and defend Her Ma-
jesty from all treasons and conspiracies. Be unto her
an helmet of salvation, and a strong tower of defence
against the face of all her enemies; clothe them with
shame and confusion, but let Her for ever flourish.
So we thy people, and the sheep of thy pasture, will
give thee thanks for ever, and will always be shewing
forth thy praise from generation to generation.--
_Amen._
_Or there may be sung or said this Hymn following:
one Verse by the Priest, and another by the Clerk
and people._
MY song shall be alway of the loving kindness of
the Lord: with my mouth will I ever be shew-
ing forth his truth from one generation to another.
_Psalm_ lxxxix. 1.
{063}
_The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done his
marvellous works: that they ought to be had in remem-
brance._ Psalm cxi. 4.
Who can express the noble acts of the Lord: or
shew forth all his praise? _Psalm_ cvi. 2.
_The works of the Lord are great: sought out of all
them that have pleasure therein_. Psalm cxi. 2.
The Lord setteth up the meek: and bringeth the
nngodly down to the ground. _Psalm_ cxlvii. 6.
_The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment: for
all them that are oppressed with wrong._ Psalm ciii. 6.
_This Collect may likewise be used._
O ALMIGHTY God, who art a strong tower of
defence unto thy servants against the face of
their enemies; We yield thee praise and thanksgiving
for the wonderful deliverance of these kingdoms from
the GREAT CONSPIRACY, and all the Miseries
and Oppressions consequent thereupon. We acknow-
ledge it thy goodness, that we are not utterly deli-
vered over as a prey unto our enemies; beseeching
thee still to continue such thy mercy towards us, that
all the world may know that thou art our Saviour and
mighty deliverer. _Amen._
_After the Prayer for the King, the Priest may say
thus._
Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all
the days of thy vanity, which he hath given thee
under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is
thy portion in _this_ life, and in thy labour which thou
takest under the sun. _Eccl_. ix. 9.
So ought men to love their wives as their own
bodies. He that loveth his wife, loveth himself. _Eph._
v. 28.
{064}
Let every one of you in particular so love his wife
even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence
her husband. _Eph_. v. 33.
It hath been said, whoever shall put away his wife,
let him give her a writing of divorcement:
But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away
his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth
her to commit adultery. _Matt_. v. 31,32.
_The Collect for God's protection of the Queen against
all her enemies._
MOST gracious God, we most humbly beseech
thee to protect thy Servant CAROLINE, our
beloved Queen, from all the dangers to which she may
be exposed; Hide her from the gathering together
of the froward, and from the insurrection of wicked
doers; Do thou weaken the hands, blast the designs,
and defeat the enterprizes of all her enemies; that no
secret conspiracies, nor open violences, may disquiet
her; but that, being safely kept under the shadow of
thy wing, and supported by thy power, she may tri-
umph over all opposition; that so the world may
acknowledge thee to be her Defender and mighty.
Deliverer in all difficulties and adversities. _Amen._
_This may also be said._
LORD God of our salvation, who hast been ex-
ceedingly gracious unto this land, and by thy
miraculous providence didst deliver us out of our
miserable confusion; by restoring to us, and to her
own just and undoubted rights, our most gracious
Queen CAROLINE, notwithstanding all the power
and malice of her enemies; and to the great comfort
and joy of our hearts: We are here now before thee,
with all due thankfulness, to acknowledge thine un-
speakable goodness herein, and to offer unto thee our"
sacrifice of praise for the same; we beseech thee to
bless the Queen with all increase of grace, honour
and happiness, in this world, and to crown her with
immortality and glory in the world to come. _Amen_.
{065}
_Versicles._
As snow in summer, and as rain in harvest, so ho-
nour is not seemly for a fool. _Prov._ xxvi. 1.
The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it can-
not rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. _Isa_. lvii.
29.
Take away the wicked from before the king, and
his throne shall be established in righteousness. _Prov._-
xxv. 5.
When it goeth well with the righteous, the city
rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is
shouting. _Prov_. xi. 10.
A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he
that speaketh lies shall not escape. _Prov_. ix. 5.
Great men are not always wise: neither do the
aged understand judgment. _Job_, xxxii. 9.
For the transgression of a land, many are the princes
thereof: but by a man of understanding and know-
ledge, the state thereof shall be prolonged. _Prov._
xxviii. 2.
As a roaring lion, and a ranging bear; so is a
wicked ruler over the poor people. _Prov._ xxviii. 15.
Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and
foolish king, who will no more be admonished. _Eccl_.
iv. 13.
His bones are full of the sins of his youth, which
shall lie down with him in the dust. _Job_, xx. 11.
Be wise now therefore O ye kings; be instructed
ye judges of the earth. _Psalm_ ii. 10.
{066}
PSALMS FROM THE NEW VERSION,
By N. BRADY, D. D. and N. TATE, Esq.
[Illustration: 074]
[Illustration: 075]
[Illustration: 076]
I. (Psalm 6.)
{068}
Reader,
It _seemeth meet to acquaint thee that the foregoing
Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving to be used Daily for
Her Majesty, hath been wholly compiled from Scripture,
and from certain Services and Forms appointed in the_
Book of Common Prayer: viz. _The Services for
Morning and Evening Prayer; the Form for the Day
of the Martyrdom of the blessed King Charles I.; the
Form for the Restoration of His most religions and
gracious Son, King Charles II.; and the Form for the
Day whereon the_ Church as by Law established _annually
celebrates the overthrow of the_ Tyranny _exercised by
His Most Sacred Majesty_ King James II. _and the
success of the Glorious Principles whereby His said
Majesty was providentially dethroned} and the_ Revolution
of 1688 _happily effected._
Farewell.
Printed by William Hose,
45, Lndgate Hill.
{069}
[Illustration: 077]
"NON MI RICORDO!"
&C. &c. &c.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY AND FOR WILLIAM HONE, LUDGATE HllL
1820.
SIXPENCE.
[Illustration: 078]
==>LOST, {070}at the Court Martial, Signor MY JOKEY'S
MEMORY, together with his Government Victualling Bill; both a little
damaged, and of no use but to the owner. Whoever will bring them to the
Publisher, in time to be restored to the Signor's disconsolate Mother,
Mrs. _Leech_, shall be rewarded with a "_Non mi ricordo!"_
"NON MI RICORDO!"
CROSS EXAMINED BY MR. BESOM.
WHO {071}are you? Non mi ricordo.
What countryman are you?--a foreigner or an englishman? Non mi
ricordo.
Do you _understand_ English? No not at all.
Will the Oath you have taken _bind_ you to speak the truth, or do you
know of any other Oath _more_ binding?
The Turnstile General objected to the ques-tion; upon which a
discussion arose as to the nature of the Oath likely to bind the
Witness, who ap-peared to be playing with a thread. The Witness was
accordingly asked, by way of illustration, to what degree he thought
the thread was _binding_, and whether he knew of any thing else _more_
binding?
The Lord Precedent Furthermore said, if the Witness believed the thread
he held was _binding_, that was sufficient.
The Lord Precedents opinion gave rise to a long discussion as to whether
_more_ binding was _binding_, and binding was _more_ binding; which
ended in a reference to the Erminians, who delivered the following
solemn opinion:--If the Witness shall answer that he thinks the bit of
thread is _binding_, there is no doubt it _is_ binding; but he cannot
be asked if a cord is _more_ binding, because he in fact says {072}that
the thread itself is _binding_. If the Witness twists the thread round
his little finger he is so far bound by it, and it is _binding_; and
having done that, it is unnecessary to inquire whether a cord, round
another part of his body, would be _more_ binding.
_Question over-ruled._
CROSS EXAMINATION RESUMED.
You are a master tailor, I think? I was cut out for a tailor.
You have been a tailor, then? I only follow tailoring as a mere
amusement.
Fond of _Goose_ I suppose--but pray Mr. Mere-amusement what is your
business? I was brought up a _Cabinet_ maker.
What can you get at it?--are you a good hand? I can't say I am; I'm
badly off; my _tools_ are worn out.
What is your place of residence?
(_Order Order_).
The Turnstile General protested against the consequences of this mode of
Examination.
Lord Juryman--Why does not the Interpreter give the Witness's Answer.
The Lord Precedent Furthermore--Because the Bench objects to the
question.
Lord MUDDLEPOOL--Does the Turnstile General object to the question.
The Turnstile General. I do object to it, my Lord. This is perhaps the
most important question that ever occurred. By this dealing out, the
party is placed in such a situation as he never was placed in before.
Mr. {073}Besom--I ask him where he now lives, and the Turnstile General
objects to this, because I do not put all the questions I might put, in
a single breath.
The Lord Precedent Furthermore--I feel great difficulty--I doubt..
Lord Wheelbarrow thought there was a _great_ deal in what the noble Lord
had said; and _he_ doubted.
CROSS EXAMINATION RESUMED.
How much money has been expended on you since you were born? Non mi
ricordo.
What have you done for it in return? More less than more.
How do you get your living? I was waiter for some years at the Hotel
_de Grand Bretagne_, and succeeded my father as head waiter at the
_Crown_ Inn.
What wages have you? Non mi ricordo.
Have you any perquisites? _Veils_.
Are you _head waiter_, or by what other name than head waiter you may be
called, at the Crown Inn?
I am after building a new place called the _Wellington Arms_, and trying
to be _Barrack-master_; if I dont gain the _Trial_ I shall be glad to
remain at the old _Crown_.
This answer appeared to excite considerable sensation,
The Twister General thought the meaning was,
'if I do n't gain what I attempt to gain.'
[The Short-hand writer was desired to read the answer, and the word
_Trial_ was retained as the correct translation.]
I {074}do not ask what you are to be hereafter, but whether you are
_still_ head waiter at the Crown?
The head waiter is dismissed occasionally.
Are you married? More yes than no.
Do you live with your own wife? No.
Is she in this country? Yes.
Why did you marry? To pay my debts.
Then why did you part? Because my debts were paid.
Were you not up to the eyes in debt? Si Signor.
Are you not bound to manifest some gratitude towards those who have paid
your debts?
The Interpreter said the witness was a mere _fanfaron_, and that he
found it difficult, if not impossible, to explain to the witness's
understanding what was meant by _gratitude_.
Cross Examination resumed.
Did not you write to your wife a licentious letter, called a letter of
license?--(_Order, order._)
I ask you again the cause of your separation?
She left me.
On what account? I did not like her, and I told her I'd have nothing to
do with _her_ any more.
After that what did you do? Oh, I rambled about.
Where did you go? To Jersey and elsewhere.
Well, Sir, go on. Non mi ricordo.
Do you mean to say that you never went to Manchester Square? More yes
than no.
Were you in the house on the footing of a private friend? No, not as a
friend.
You {075}mentioned your father just now:--you did not go in your
father's _cart_, I presume; in what sort of carriage did you go? In
the old yellow chariot.
How long did it take you to travel from Manchester Square to Richmond?
Non mi ricordo.
How many other places did you go to? Non mi ricordo.
Is the Marquis of C. a married man?
(_Order. Order._)
After you parted from your wife, on what terms did you live? I've been
_trying_ to get rid of her.
Do you know what Matthew says (c. v. v. 32.)?
Matthew? Matthew? (_trying to recollect_)--what Matthew?--he's no
friend of mine.
In what light do you consider your oath at the marriage ceremony? A
ceremony.
If your marriage oath has not bound you, can you expect people to
believe you if ever you should take a solemn public oath? More yes than
no.
By the Roman law, a divorce was granted for Drunkenness, Adultery, and
_False Keys_: what is your opinion of that law?
The Twister General said, that it was contrary to common sense to ask
the witness's opinion about any _Law_.
How many Wives does _your_ Church allow you? Non mi ricordo.
How many have you had since you separated from your own? Non mi
ricordo.
Are you a Member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice? Yes (_with
great energy_).
The Cross-examining Counsel said that the Interpreter had materially
altered the sense of the last question; {076}he had in fact asked, if
the Witness was Member of the Society for the suppression of _Wives, (a
loud laugh)_ which Witness had eagerly answered in the affirmative.
The Witness's answer was expunged, and on the question being repeated
correctly, he answered that he was told it was his duty to encourage the
_Vice_ Society, because it professed to diminish the influence of bad
example.
Have they ever prosecuted you? Me!--(_with astonishment_)--they like
_me_ too well!
What do you mean then by Suppression--is your Soeiety to prevent little
vice from being committed, or great vice from being found out?
More Yes than No.
It was here moved by Lord Le Cuisinier, that 4 o'Clock, the hour of
dinner, was arrived.
Another, in a maiden Speeeh, said, that during his long silence in that
Court he had had leisure to observe, that 4 o'Clock in the _morning_ was
a more usual hour of adjournment.
Another considered that Lord Le Cuisinier's suggestion ought not to be
entertained for a moment. We only exist in our formalities. If we suffer
ourselves to be put a stop to by the motion, we may find that we are
travelling round again into the obsolete usages of our early ancestors;
which will be to describe a circle that must be generally considered
as nothing less than a revolution! I therefore deprecate the least
innovation, and move, as an amendment, that 4 o'Clock is _not_ arrived.
The {077}Master General of the _Black_ Barracks at Exeter, rose without
his wig, and declaring, upon the memory of his whiskers, that he had
just heard it strike 4, he enquired whether the Clock was in _Order.
(Loud and continued cries of hear hear.)_
The Home DOCTOR felt his pulse alarmingly quicken one and a fraction in
the minute, and nervously said, that the clock was clearly guilty of a
barefaced libel and ought to be instantly held to bail for breach of the
peace. The simultaneous action of all the Clocks throughout the nation
and their open communication by circulars, was an index to the existence
of an organized correspondence and a systematic affiliation. He trembled
at the positive intelligence he had received, that millions at that
moment held their hands in an attitude ready to strike; but it was the
proudest day of his life that he had so far succeeded by a _circular_
movement of his own, as to enable his workmen to hold them to the peace
for an hour together.
Lord Bathos assured the Black-Barrack Master-General that the Clock
_was_ out of Order, and he congratulated the Home Doctor on his
efficiency; but he thought they had not sunk low enough into the
subject; for he had strong doubts whether the striking might not be
construed into an overt act of High Treason, and if he saw any
probability of being supported he should conclude with a substantive
motion. Did not the Lord Precedent remember a Clock Case, in which,
immediately after the chain had been locked up, a principal link
suddenly disappeared? and whether, after the most minute inquiry, there
was not every reason to believe from the best information that could be
obtained at that time, {078}that that link had been _prigged? (Hear
hear.)_ Take even the very last Clock Case, where the chain was kept
together with the greatest pains, and the utmost care. If the smallest
link in that chain had been _prigged_, it would have been fatal to the
works, and yet in that very case, two days after the chain was locked
up, a link was obtained, which, if sooner discovered, would have
lengthened the chain to the necessary extent, and brought home in the
most conclusive manner the guilt of the Clock. He therefore moved that
the Clock be examined, and the chain kept in their own custody, with
liberty to add to the number of links.
Lord Ratstail with his usual animation seconded the Motion.
Marquiz Boudoir moved as an Amendment, that the Clock being in contempt,
the _Black stick_ be ordered to _walk him_ in to-morrow. Seconded.
Upon this Amendment the following Amendment was moved and seconded, that
the word 'to-morrow' be expunged, and the word 'yesterday' be inserted
in its place. _Ordered._
Cross Examination resumed.
Does the Witness recollect whether he was at B--------? Non mi ricordo.
Who usually closed the Pavilion? I did.
Was it so close as to exclude any person outside from seeing what passed
within, or was it partially open? It was quite closed--When I could not
close it with C**** entirely, I did it with other pieces.
What do you mean by saying with other pieces?
I mean with other pieces of the same quality.
Symptoms {079}of impatience were now expressed, with loud cries of
_Withdraw, withdraw._
Do you remember any thing particular occurring one night? No.
Do you not recollect whether a new wing was added during the time you
and your mistress were absent? Non mi ricordo.
Do you know a certain Colonel Q.? Yes, he has _too_ little mustachios.
Are you a sober man? More no than yes.
How many bottles a day do you drink. Non mi ricordo.
Do you drink six bottles? Non mi ricordo.
Five bottles? Non mi ricordo.
How many nights in the week do you go to bed sober? Non mi ricordo.
Are you sober now? More no than yes.
Where do you spend your mornings? AtbCuraçao.
Where do you spend your evenings? At the _Cat and Fiddle._
What is your favorite dish? Trifle.
What is your favorite game? _Bag-at-L----_
What is your favorite amusement? The C.
After Dressing, Drinking, and Dreaming, what time remains for thinking?
Non mi ricordo.
I hold in my hand a list of immense sums of money that have been
advanced to you, how much have you left? None.
Well, but you have something to show for it? No.
How do you live? I have a _doll_-shop, and a large stable in the
country, and some _cow_-houses in different parts.
Are {080}not your favourite friends _horn_-boys and flashmen?--_(Order, order.)_
Can you produce a certificate of good character from those who _know_
you? Yes, from the _minister._
Pho! plio! do n't trifle; can you from any _respectable_ person?
More no than yes.
I understand you have the _scarlet_ fever, do you not know that it ends
here in a _putrid_ fever? Non mi ricordo.
You have many companions and advisers, but have you to your knowledge
one _real_ friend in the world; and if not, why not? Non mi ricordo.
By what acts of your life do you expect you will be remembered hereafter
? I shall not answer you any more questions; you put questions to me I never dreamt of.
Suppose every man in society were to do as you do, what would become
of society; and what right have you to do so, more than any other man
?--_(Witness greatly agitated?)_
The Witness from the _Grillery_ asked whether the _Cross_ Examination
was nearly concluded? _(Cries of Keep on!)_--Supposing that the
business would close to day at 4 o'clock, he had made a private
_assignation,_ although he was quite ready to _stop_ if necessary.
The Lord Precedent Furthermore was in favour of adhering to a square
rule; he had not entered the Court till five seconds past ten by his
_stop_-watch, {081}in consequence of consulting with his Wife upon
a motion-of-course which they had contemplated; and their further
deliberation had been postponed until after the adjournment to-day. It
was impossible to know what questions might turnout to be doubtful or
doubtless; yet adjourning at Five o'Clock would gain a delay of six
hours in the Week, and the _gaining of any thing_ he considered very
material in the present case.
An Adjournment then took place, the Witness remaining on
THE GRILLERY.
[Illustration: 089]
ADVERTISEMENTS EXTRAORDINARY
CONSPIRACY.
WHEREAS {082}a most abominable GANG, have caused to be published and
promulgated throughout the Nation a description of the infirmities and
necessities of our nature, of which decorum forbids the mention; and
also gross and inflaming allusions to the intercourse between the sexes,
and wanton and shocking exposures relating thereto; to the destruction
of youthful innocence, to the shame and disgust of matron modesty, and
to the horror of all heads of families: it is therefore proposed to
call an immediate MEETING, for the purpose of considering the best
mode of preventing an increase of this dreadful contamination, and of
securing the ringleaders of the Conspiracy, and bringing them to condign
punishment.
NEW VICTUALLING OFFICE.
TO CONTRACTORS.--Persons willing to supply this Establishment with
CAST-IRON REPEATERS, having duplex Movements, according to the Working
Models now in use as above, may send in Sealed Tenders, stating the
number they can instantly supply for immediate use, and the price
thereof at per hundred.
TO NACKERMEN.
THE old Hackney, Liverpool, who lately lost his paces, is _glandered,_
gone blind, got cruel vicious, tried to kick his mistress's brains
out, shattered himself to nothing, and is expected to go down with the
staggers. Any body who thinks it worth while to send a _drag_ to the
Stable yard may have him for fetching.
TO MANGLERS--JUST LEAVING HIS PLACE.
A STOUT ABLE-BODIED IRISHMAN, for a long time a master hand at mangling;
when he begins there is no stopping him, and never tires. Can fold
and smooth, and double and iron, all day. Will turn with any body. Was
formerly a master in Dublin, where his mangling will never be forgotten.
His Character may be had of any body there. Is very smooth spoken, of
good address, looks like an upper Valet, and is a perfect devil at his
Work. May be heard of at the Triangle in the Bird-cage Walk.
TO LAUNDRESSES, WANTS A PLACE.
AN old Woman accustomed to coarse things; and work, however filthy,
never comes amiss. Where she is now they find her in _ruin_, and she
finds dishclouts; but is leaving, being almost poisoned by printers'
ink. To save trouble, will have nothing to do with cleaning the House.
Is used to ironing, and putting by, in any quantities, and never tires
at hanging up. Can have an undeniable Character from the Rev. Mr. Hay,
and the Recorder of London.
STRAYED AND MISSING.
IN {083}Infirm Elderly Gentleman in a Public Office, lately left his
home, just after dreadfully ill-using his wife about half a Crown, and
trying to beat her. He had long complained a great deal of his forehead,
and lately had a leech put upon him. He was last seen walking swiftly
towards the Horns without a Crown to his hat, accompanied by some
evil disposed persons, who tied a great green bag to his tail full of
crackers, which he mistook for sweetmeats, and burnt himself dreadfully.
Every person he met in this deplorable condition tried to persuade him
to go back, but in vain. He is very deaf and very obstinate, and cannot
bear to be looked at or spoken to. It is supposed that he has been
seduced and carried off by some artful female. He may be easily known by
his manners. He fancies himself the politest man in Europe, because he
knows how to bow, and to offer a pinch of snuff; and thinks himself the
greatest man in Europe, because people have humoured him and let him
have his own way. He is so fond of tailoring, that he lately began a
suit that will take him his life to complete. He delights in playing at
soldiers, supposes himself a cavalry officer, and makes speeches, that
others write for him, in a field marshal's uniform. Sometimes he fancies
himself 'Glorious Apollo,' plays;Hailstones of Brunswick' on the base
fiddle, and qualifies his frieuds to perform 'Cuckolds all on a row.'
His concerns are very much deranged. Not long ago he imported a vast
quantity of Italian images at enormous prices, upon credit, and hoarded
them up in a waterside cotton warehouse. Since then, things have gone
all against him, and he has been in a very desponding state. It is of
the utmost consequence to himself that he should be at his post, or he
may lose his place; one of his predecessors some time ago having
been cashiered for his misconduct. If this should meet his eye, it is
earnestly requested that he will return to his duty, and he will be
kindly received and no questions asked.
N. B. He has not a friend in the world except the advertiser and a few
others, who never had an opportunity of speaking to him and letting him
know the real state of his affairs.
PUBLIC OFFICE, LUDGATE HILL.
1st September, 1820. "WHEREAS {084}that well known old established
Public House, (formerly a _free_ house) called the Political House that Jack built, has been
feloniously entered into and damaged, and the property therein carried
off to a large amount, by a numerous gang of desperate Villains, who,
by various vile arts and contrivances, have not only kept possession
thereof, but also of the Head Waiter, who was intrusted by Mr. Bull,
the owner, with the management of the concern, and was a very promising
young man when Mr. Bull first knew him, and might have done very well
if he had followed the advice of his old friends, and not suffered these
desperadoes to get him into their clutches; since when he seems to have
forgotten himself, and by neglecting his duty sadly, and behaving ill to
the customers who support the House, has almost ruined the Business,
and has also dreadfully injured the Sign, which Mr. Bull had had fresh
painted after he dismissed a former waiter for his bad manners. Whoever
will assist Mr. Bull in bringing the offenders to Justice, will be doing
a great service to the young man, and he will still be retained in his
situation, unless he has actually destroyed or made away with the Sign,
which Mr. Bull very much admires, it being a _heir-loom_. If offered to
be pawned or sold it is requested the parties may be stopped, and notice
given as above. As the young man has not been seen for some time, there
is no doubt the ruffians have either done him a serious mischief, or
secreted him somewhere to prevent Mr. Bull, who is really his friend,
from speaking to him.
[Illustration: 092]
"What are you at? what are you after?"
The End.
THE POLITICAL SHOWMAN-AT HOME!
[Illustration: 093]
{085}
EXHIBITING HIS CABINET OF CURIOSITIES AND CREATURES--ALL ALIVE!
By The Author Of The Political House That Jack Built.
With Twenty-Four Cuts.
[Illustration: 093]
"The putrid and mouldering carcase of exploded Legitimacy."
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR WILLIAM HONE, 45, LUDGATE-HILL.
1821.
ONE SHILLING.
[Ilustration: 095]
THE SHOWMAN.
Ladies {087}and Gentlemen,
Walk up! walk up! and see the Curiosities and Creatures--all {088}alive!
alive O! Walk up I--now's your time!--only a shilling. Please to
walk up!
Here is the strangest and most wonderful artificial Cabinet in
Europe!--made of nothing--but lacker'd brass, turnery, and papier
mâche--all fret work and varnish, held together by steel points!--very
crazy, but very curious!
Please to walk in, Ladies and Gentlemen--it's well worth seeing! here
are the most wonderful of all wonderful Living Animals. 'Jake care!
Don't go within their reach-they mind nobody but me! A short time ago
they got loose, and, with some other vermin that came from their holes
and corners, desperately attacked a Lady of Quality; but, as luck would
have it, I, and my (four and twenty men,' happened to come in at the
very moment;--we 'pull'd' away, and prevented'em from doing her a
serious mischief. Though they look tame, their vicious dispositions
are unchanged. If any thing was to happen to me, they'd soon break out
again, and shew their natural ferocity, i'm in continual danger from'em
myself--for if I didn't watch'em closely they'd destroy me. As the clown
says, 'there never was such times,'--so there's no telling what tricks
they may play yet.
Ladies and Gentlemen,--these animals have been exhibited at Court,
before the King, and all the Royal Family! Indeed His Majesty is so
fond of'em that he often sees'em in private, and feeds'em; and he is
so diverted by'em that he has been pleased to express his gracious
approbation of all their motions. But they're as cunning as the old one
himself! Bless you, he does not know a thousandth part of their tricks.
You, Ladies and Gentlemen, may see'em just as they are!--the Beasts and
Reptiles--all alive! alive O! and the Big Boo by--all a-light! a-light
O!
Walk in, Ladies and Gentlemen! walk in! just a-going to
begin.--Stir'em up! Stir'em up there with the long pole!
Before I describe the Animals, please to look at the Show-Cloth
opposite:
The Curiosities have labels under them, which the company can read.
[Illustration: 097]
{089}
THE TRANSPARENCY, of which this is a copy, was exhibited by WILLIAM HONE
duriNg the ILLUMINATION commencing on the 11th, and ending on the 15th
of November, 1820,in celebration of the VICTORY obtained by ThE PRESS,
or the LIBERTIES OF THE PEOPLE, which had been assailed in the Person
of The Queen: The words "TRIUMPH OF THE PRESS," being displayed in
variegated lamps as a motto above it. On the 26th, when The Queen went
10 St. Paul's, it was again exhibited with Lord Bacon's immortal words,
"KNOWLEDGE IS POWER," displayed in like manner.--'The Transparency was
painted by Mr. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
--COURT VERMIN that buzz round
And fly-blow the King's ear; make him suspect
His wisest, faithfullest, best counsellors--
Who, for themselves and their dependants, seize
All places, and all profits; and -who wrest,
To their own ends, the statutes of the land,
Or safely break them.
Southey's Joan of Arc.
DIALOGES OF CREATURES MORALYSED.
PROLOGE.
To exalt virtue, expose vice, promote truth, and help men to
serious reflection, is my first moving cause and last
directed.
De Foe's Review, Preface.
----Oh that I dared
To basket up the family of plagues
That waste our vitals; peculation, sale
Of honour, peijury, corruptiou, frauds
By forgery, by subterfuge of law,
By tricks and lies---
Then cast them, closely bundled, every brat
At the right door!
Cowper.
"JUGLATOR REGIS." Strutt's Sports
---a most officious Drudge,
His face and gown drawn out with the same budge,
His pendant Pouch, which is both large and wide,
Looks like a Letters-patent:------
He is as avful, as he had been sent
From Moses with the eleventh commandement.
Corbet's Poems, 1672, p. 3.
[Illustration: 100]
{092}
BAGS.--_(a Scruple Balance.)_
-----'tis the veriest madness, to live poor,
And die with _Bags_----
Gifford's Juvenal, Sat. xiv.
Dubius is such a _scrupulous_ good man.--
Yes--you may catch him tripping, if you can!
He would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own.
With hesitation, admirably slow,
He humbly hopes--presumes--it may be so.
Through constant dread of giving truth offence,
He ties up all his hearers in suspense!
His sole opinion, whatsoe'er befall,
Cent'ring, at last, in having--none at all.
Cowper.
Well! he is a _nimble_ gentleman; set him upon Bankes, his horse, in a
saddle rampant, and it is a great question, which part of the Centaur
shews better tricks.
{093}
[Illustration: 101]
A CROCODILE.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I begin the Exhibition with the Crocodile, which is of the Lizard tribe
; yet, from his _facility of creeping through narrow and intricate
ways,_ he has been classed among Serpents. * He has a monstrous
appetite, his _swallow_ is immense, and his legs are placed _side_-ways.
It is a vulgar error to suppose that he cannot _turn_; for, although
he is in appearance very heavy, and his back is very strong, and proof
against the hardest blows, yet he is so _pliable_, that he can _wheel_
round with the utmost facility. When in his haunt, and apparently
torpid, he sometimes utters a piteous _whine_ of distress--almost human;
_sheds tears_, and, attracting the unwary, suddenly darts upon a man,
and gorges him with all he has. His _claws_ are very long and tenacious.
If a victim eludes his grasp, he infallibly secures him by his fleet
power. He is sometimes used for purposes of _state and show_, and his
bags are much coveted for their _peculiar_ qualities. **
* By Linnaeus.
** Goldsmith's Animated Nature, v. 283.
{094}
[Illustration: 102]
A MASK.--(an Incrustation--a Relique.)
A shallow brain behind a serious mask,
An oracle within an empty cask,
A solemn fop.--
--A sooty Film.
Cowper.
----------The Thing on Earth
Least qualified in honour, learning, worth,
To occupy a sacred, awful post,
In which the best and worthiest tremble most.
The royal letters are a thing of course,
A King, that would, might recommend his horse;
And deans, no doubt, and chapters, with one voice,
As bound in duty, would confirm the choice.
****
A piece of mere Church-furniture at best.
{097}
[Illustration: 105]
THE LOCUST.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Locust is a destructive insect, of the Grillus tribe. They are
so numerous, and so rapacious, that they may be compared to an army,
pursuing its march to devour the fruits of the earth, as an instrument
of _divine displeasure_ towards a devoted country. They have leaders,
who direct their motions in preying on the labours of man _in fertile
regions_. No insect is more formidable in places where they breed: for
they _wither_ whatever they _touch_. It is impossible to recount the
_terrible devastations_ which historians and travellers relate that they
have committed at different times, in various parts of the world. Many
are so _venomous_, that persons _handling_ them are immediately stung,
and seized with shivering and trembling; but it has been discovered
that, in most cases, their hateful qualities are completely assuaged by
_palm_ oil.*
* Goldsmith, vi. 21.
{096}
[Illustration: 104]
A SCORPION.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Scorpion is a reptile that resembles the _common lobster_, but is
much more hideous. They are very terrible to mankind, on account of
their size and malignity, and their large _crooked stings_. They often
assault and kill people in their houses. In Italy, and some other parts
of Europe, they are the greatest pests of mankind; but their venom is
most dreadful in the _East_. An inferior species sally forth at certain
seasons, in battalions;--scale houses that stand in the way of their
march;--wind along the course of rivers;--and on their retreat entrench
themselves. Scorpions are so irascible, that they will attempt to sting
a _constable's staff_; yet even a harmless little mouse * destroyed
three of them, _one after the other_, by acting on the _defensive_,
survived their venomous wounds, and seemed pleased with its victory.
When in a confined space, they exert all their rage against each other,
and there is nothing to be seen but universal carnage. If this mutual
destruction did not prevail, they would multiply so fast as to render
some countries uninhabitable. **
* Confined for the sake of experiment in a vessel, by
Maupertuis.
** Goldsmith, v. 428.
{097}
THE LOBSTER.
----they preferre
Broiles before Rest, and place their Peace in Warre.
Du Bartas
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Lobster is very similar to the scorpion. It is _armed_ with _two_
great _claws_, by the help of which it moves itself _forwards_. They
_entrench_ themselves in places that can be easily defended, where they
acquire defensive and offensive _armour_. They issue forth from their
_fortresses_ in hope of _plunder_, and to surprise such inadvertent and
weak animals as come within their reach. They have little to apprehend
except from each other, the more powerful being formidable enemies to
the weaker. They sometimes continue in the same habitations for a long
time together; in general they get _new coats once a year_. When in
_hot water_ they make a great noise, attack any one that puts a hand
towards them, and knowing their danger, use violent efforts to escape.
In a sufficient heat they _change their colours_.*
* Goldsmith, v. 163.
[Illustration: 105]
{098}
[Illustration: 106]
A PRIME CRUTCH.--
(From the Westminster Infirmary--Upper Ward).
He fondly 'imitates' that wondrous Lad,
That durst assay the sun's bright flaming team;
Spite of whose feeble hands, the horses mad
Fling down on burning earth the scorching beam;--
So made _the flame in which himself wasfired_;
The World the bonfire was--_when_ he _expired!_*
Like him of Ephesus, he had what he desired.
Fletcher's Purple Island.
* The 'Lad' died in the midst of war, ejaculating heaven to
save the country from the miseries of his system of misrule.
{099}
[Illustration: 107]
THE OPOSSUM.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is a _quick climbing_ animal; but is, in other respects, _heavy_
and helpless. When it is pursued on _level ground_ and overtaken, it
feigns itself dead, to deceive the hunters. A faculty in its _seat_,
enables it to suspend itself from a high branch, by that part, for a
long time together; and, in this position, watching for whatever is weak
that comes within its reach, it falls upon it and usually destroys it.
By this elevating power in its _nether end_, it not only seizes its prey
more securely, but preserves itself from pursuers: looking down on them,
in a sort of _upright_ position, heels upwards. It is very domesticated,
but proves a disagreeable inmate, from its _scent_; which, however
fragrant in _small_ quantities, is uniformly ungrateful when _copiously_
supplied. _It is a boroughing creature_. *
* Goldsmith, iii. 322 Stedman Shaw's Zoology
{100}
[Illustration: 108]
----Knaves, who, in truth's despite,
Can white to black transform, and black to white!
Gifford's Juvenal, Sat. iii.
When they were fewer, men might have had a Lordship safely conveyed to
them in a piece of parchment no bigger than your hand, though several
sheets will not do it safely in this wiser age.--Walton's Angler
They'll argue as confidently as if they spoke gospel instead of law;
they'll cite you six hundred several Precedents, though not one of
them come near to the case in hand; they'll muster up the authority of
Judgments, Deeds, Glosses, and Reports, and tumble over so many dusty
Records, that they make their employ, though in itself easy, the
greatest slavery imaginable; always accounting that the best plea which
they have took most pains for.--Erasmus of Folly, 96.
In other countries, they make laws upon laws and add precepts upon
precepts, till the endless number of them makes the fundamental part
to be forgotten; leaving nothing but a confused heap of explanations,
which may cause ignorant people to doubt whether there is really any
thin» meant by the laws or not.--Berkeley's Gaudentio di Lucca, 166.
In the country of the Furr'd Law-cats, they gripe all, devour all,
cooskite all, burn all, draw all, hang all, quarter all, behead all,
murder all, imprison all, waste all, and ruin all, without the least
notice of right or wrong: for among them vice is called virtue;
wickedness, piety; treason, loyalty; robbery, justice: Plunder is
their motto; and all this they do, because they dare. Gripe-men-all,
the Chief of the Purr'd Law-cats, said to Pantagruel 'Our Laws are
like cobwebs; your silly little flies are stopt, caught, and destroy'd
therein, but your stronger ones Break them, and force and carry them
which way they please. Don't think we are so mad as to set up our nets
tc snap up your great Robbers aod tyrants: no, they are somewhat too
hard for us, there's no meddllng with them; for they will make no more
of us, than we make of the little ones.'-- Rabelais, b. v. c. xi. xii.
{101}
BLACK RATS.--(Stuffed.)
Ladies and Gentlemen,
These are most pernicious animals. They borough, and prey on our food,
drink, clothing, furniture, live-stock, and every convenience of life;
furnishing their residences with the plunder of our property. They have
particular haunts, to which they entice each other in large numbers,
for the sake of _prey_; where they often do incredible damage to our
_mounds_, and undermine the strongest _embankments_. Sometimes they
hoard their plunder in _nests_, that they make at a distance from their
usual _places of congregating. * They are very bold and fierce. Instead
of waiting for an attack, they usually become the aggressors, and,
_seizing their adversaries by the lips_, inflict dangerous, and even
deadly wounds. While they subsist on our industry, and increase our
terrors, they make no grateful returns, and, therefore, mankind have
studied various ways for diminishing their numbers; but their _cunning_
discovers the most distant danger, and if any are disturbed or attacked,
in an unusual manner, the rest take the alarm, and, becoming exceedingly
shy, and wary, elude the most ingenious devices of their pursuers. When,
unhappily, you come in contact with one of these _vermin_, the best way
of dispatching it is by a single squeeze; but novices who hesitate,
are sure to prove sufferers. They have been found on a bench, so
_interwoven_ by their tails, that _by reason of their entanglement, they
could not part. ** A dead rat, _by altering the look of his head and
the appearance of his skin_, may be transformed into the appearance of
a much more _powerful_ animal; and this, Ladies and Gentlemen, _has been
considered a master piece in cheating._***
* White's Selborne, 4to. 75.
** Letters from Bodleian Library, i. 12.
*** Ibid.ii. 160, note. See also Goldsmith, iii. 169.
{102}
[Illustration: 110]
A CADGE ANCHOR.--(a Remora--a sucking Fish.)
What have we here? a man or a fish? A Fish: he _smells_ like a fish
; a very _ancient_ and fish-like smell; a kind of, not of the newest,
Poor John. Were I in England now (as once I was) and had but this fish
painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver:
_there_ would this monster make a man; any _strange beast_ there makes
a man. His gabbling voice is to utter foul speeches, and to detract. He
is as disproportioned in his manners, as in his shape. As with age his
body grows uglier, his mind cankers.
* Caliban.
{103}
[Illustration: 111]
A WATER SCORPION.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This offensive insect lives in _stagnant_ waters, continually watching
for prey. Its feelers resemble the claws of a scorpion; the eyes are
_hard and prominent_, the shoulders _broad and flat_. It wastes twenty
times as much as its appetite requires; one can destroy thirty or
forty of the libellula kind, each as large as itself. It is nevertheless
greatly overrun with a small kind of lice, which probably repay the
injuries it inflicts elsewhere. At certain seasons it flies to _distant
waters_ in search of food; but it remains where it was produced until
fully grown, when it sallies forth in search of a companion of the
other sex, and soon begets an useless generation.*
* Martyn's Diet. Nat. Hist. 2 vols, Folio, 1785.
He that maketh the wound bleed inwards--
Gives Liberty the last, the mortal shock;
Slips the slave's collar on, and snaps the lock.
What is his Character?-- A man of amiable Manners-- mild and civil.
Character of the Murderer of the Man.
I never judge from Manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the
civilist gentleman I ever met with; and one of the mildest persons I
ever saw was Ali Pacha.--Lord Byron.
{104}
[Illustration: 112]
DIRKPATRICK.
(a Petrified Putrefaction.--a Bloodstone.}
Moral.
I recommend it to all that read this History, that when they find
their lives come up, in any degree, to a similitude of cases, they will
inquire and ask themselves, is not this the time to repent?--De Foe's
Col. Jack, 1723, p. 399
{105}
[Illustration: 113]
THE BLOODHOUND.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
This is the most terrible animal in the Collection. Its character is
that of decided _enmity to man_; it hunts down those who endeavor to
regain their _Liberty_, and is called the _Ban_ Dog. When it scents a
human victim it follows his track with cruel perseverance, flies upon
him with dreadful ferocity, and, unless dragged off, tears and rends
the form until every noble feature of humanity is destroyed. It has an
exquisite smell for blood. The species vary little throughout the world
: there is scarcely any difference between the trans-atlantic _Spanish_
blood-hound and the _Irish_ wolf-dog, whose ferocity has been much
diminished by the animal being frequently _crossed_. It is still kept on
some of the old _royal grounds_.
{106}
[Illustration: 114]
THE DOCTOR.--(a Dejection)
In these days the grand "_primum mobile_" of England is CANT--Cant
political, Cant religious, Cant moral, but always CANT--a thing of
words, without the smallest influence upon actions; the English being no
wiser, no better, and much poorer, and more divided among themselves,
as well as far less moral, than they were before the prevalence of this
_Verbal Decorum._--Lord Byron on Mr. Bowles
Diary.--April 1st. I grew _melancholy_.--My father lying sick, told me,
in syllables, the _Philosopher's stone_.--It pleased God to put me in
mind that I was now placed in the condition I always desired.--I hung
three spiders about my neck (_for a charm_).--I kissed the king's
hand.--_Cotera desunt._--Elias Ashmole's Diary.
.
{107}
[Illustration: 115]
THE BOOBY.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The _Creature_ you now see is a sort of _Noddy_ of the Gull kind.
Observe his uncouth form and his ludicrously wise looks! He is the most
stupid of the _feathered_ tribe; yet he has a _voracious_ appetite, and
an enormous swallow. You perceive that he feigns the appearance of being
_upright_, of seeming to comprehend objects he sees, of listening to
what he hears, and that he shakes his head with _gravity_, as though
he had a certain degree of understanding. His greatest pleasure is in
_standing still._ He has not sense enough to _get out of People's way_
; speaking to him or making _motions_ never disturb him. There is no
compelling him to the fatigue of _changing_ his position till he feels
a _blow_; for he keeps his place till he is approached quite close, and
_knocked down_. He is a living _full stop_. When he is _forced to
walk_, which is very seldom, he goes from _side to side_. Like others of
similar tribes, he boroughs. In this respect the union and affection of
these _Creatures_ towards each other is wonderful; for, when undisturbed
by the encroachments of _men_, they construct their _nests_ as
convenient as if they expected them to be _permanent_; arranging
their different places with such an amazing degree of uniformity, as to
resemble a _regular plantation_. Sometimes they draw up side by side,
in rank and file, and sit brooding together as if in deep counsel,
on affairs of moment--their _silliness_ and _solemnity_ exciting
involuntary _laughter!_ This _burlesque_ takes place, in particular,
about
{108}the month of _November_. The habits of these tribes are known
through those who visit the haunts they have forsaken for more obscure
_retreats_, where they can _build aloft_, and settle in their _nests_ at
ease: a practice which confirms the remark of a great naturalist, that
the presence of _men_ not only destroys the society of the _meaner_
animals, but even extinguishes their _grovelling_ instincts. Hitherto
the Booby has been considered of no service whatever; yet a similar
species, * by drawing a wick through the body and lighting it, is made
into a _candle_S. ** If this Booby could be thus used, the _illumination
of_ both Houses and the public offices might be speedily effected, and
the tribe he belongs to be rendered available to human purposes. At
any rate a skilful tallow-chandler might try his hand at converting the
_Creature_ into A TWOPENNY FLAT
[Illustration: 116]
{109}
[Illustration: 117]
THE SLOP PAIL.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The "Slop Pail" being occupied by "Slop" keeping his _tri-colored_,
cockade in it, with the hope of bleaching it _white_, has become more
and more offensive daily, and will be kicked down.
The {110}GREAT BOOTS having been _out of order_, were _welted_, and
afterwards new _vamped, and polished._ Dr. Southey, _the Varnisher_, has
them in hand at present, and is '_doing them up_' as fast as possible.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I thank you for your company. Opposite to you is a description of
The Monster that my people are now _hunting_ on the Continent. When
_destroyed_, its skin will be stuffed and preserved among the other
Antiquities and Curiosities in the _European Museum_.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I wish you _a good day.-- Keep_ to the right.
Walk steadily forward. The _Animals_ may make an _uproar_, but don't be
alarmed; I'll see you safe out. Remember they are _under my control_,
and cannot take a step beyond the reach of MY EYE
[Illustration: 118]
{111}
THE BOA DESOLATOR, OR LEGITIMATE VAMPIRE.
It overlays the continent like an ugly Incubus, sucking the blood and
stopping up the breath of man's life. It claims Mankind as its property,
and allows human nature to exist only upon sufferance; it haunts the
understanding like a frightful spectre, and oppresses the very air
witha weight that is not to be borne. Hazlitt's Political Essays and
Characters, p. 21.
This hideous Beast, not having at any time put forth all his _members_,
cannot be accurately described. Every _dark_ Century has added to his
frightful bulk. More disgusting than the filthiest reptile, his strength
exceeds all other _brute force_.
His enormous, bloated, toad-like body is _ferruginous: * the under
surface appears of _polished steel_. His cavern-like mouth is always
open to devour; his teeth are as _swords_, and his jaw-teeth as
knives'--as millions of _bristling bayonets_ intermingled with _black
fangs_ containing mortal venom. His roar is a voice from the sepulchre.
He is marked 'in form of a cross_, ** with a series of _chains_,
intersected by the triangle, *** and glittering colours, variegated with
_red_.
His aspect is cruel and terrible. He loves the _dark_, but never sleeps.
Wherever he makes his lair, nature sickens, and man is brutified. His
presence is 'plague, pestilence, and famine, battle, and murder, and
sudden death.' His bite rapidly _undermines the strongest_ Constitution,
and dissolves the whole into an entire mass of Corruption. He has no
_brain_, but the _walls_ of the skull emit a _tinkling_ sound, that
attracts his victims, and lulls them into _passive obedience_. In this
state he clutches them in his coils, and _screws and squeezes_ them to
destruction--_slavering_ them over, and sucking in their _substance_
at leisure. It is difficult to witness the half-stifled cries of his
harmless prey, or to behold its anxiety and trepidation, while the
monster writhes hideously around it, without imagining _what our own
case would be in the same dreadful situation._ *****
* Shaw's Zoology. Art. Boa, iii. 344.
** Ibid. 366.
*** Linnæus's Nat. Hist, by Gmelio, 8vo. (Jooes) 1816.
Art. Boa Constrictor, xii. 437.
**** Shaw's Zoology, iii. 339.
***** Macleod's Wreck of the Alceste, 291, 295.
His rapacity is increased by _indulgence_. He grinds, cranches, and
devours whole multitudes, without being satisfied. His blood is cold.
His ravening maw does not digest: it is an ever-yawning grave that
_engulphs_--a 'bottomless pit' continually crying '_give, give!_'
Sometimes he rests {112}from his labors,' to admire his loathsome
_limbs_, and _slime_ them over. He has no affections: yet he appears
charmed by the _hum_ of the insects that follow him, and pleased by the
_tickling crawl_ of the meanest reptiles-permitting them to hang upon
his lips, and partake of his leavings. But his real pleasure is in
listening to the cries of his captives, the wail of the broken hearted,
and the groans of the dying.
He lives in defiance and scorn of Providence, and in hatred to the
happiness of man. When distended with human carnage, and wet with the
gore of the innocent and the helpless, he lifts an impious _form_ to
heaven in solemn mockery. He was predicted of by the Seer of old, as the
Beast with many heads and crowns, bearing the name of Blasphemy.
The garish _colours_ that denote his malignity, excite only horror and
detestation in the lover of nature, and of his species. They are most
_lively_ when he is engaged in the work of death, and cause him to be
admired by the vulgar multitude, learned and unlearned, who hold him
_sacred_, pay him _divine honors_, call him _holy_, and fall down before
him as an object-of worship, while priests glorify him, and minister to
him, and pray for his murderous successes in the temples. Hence-the good
and the wise, in all ages, have devised and practised various methods
for the destruction of a Fiend that creates nothing but _terror and
imposture_, and between whom and rational man there is a natural
antipathy.
He is filled with the deadliest rage by the encreasing growth of the
_pop'lar Tree_S:--
THAT TREE, beneath whose shade the Sons of Men
Shall 'pitch their tenta in peace.
----Brissot murder'd, and the blameless wife
Of Roland! Martyr'd patriots, spirits pure,
Wept by the good, ye fell! Yet still survives,
Sown by your toil, and by your blood manured,
The imperishable TREE; and still its roots
Spread, and strike deep. ----
Southey's Joan of Arc, b. iii.
His existence is drawing to a close. It has been ascertained that the
way of putting him _quietly_ out of the world is by a consisting of the
_four and twenty letters_ * of the alphabet, properly _composed_, made
up in certain _forms_, covered with sheets of white _paper_. and well
_worked_ in a _Columbian_ Press. These Papers are to be _forced down his
throat_ {113}daily, _morning and evening_, and on every _seventh_ day
a _double_ dose should be administered. The operation is accelerated
by the powerful _exhibition_ of the Wood Draughts. In a short time his
teeth will fall out--he will be seized with catalepsy--in the last stage
of mortification, _he will_ sting himself _to death_;--and all mankind,
relieved from the deadened atmosphere under which they had been
_gasping_, will make the first use of their _recovered breath_, to raise
an universal shout of joy at the extinction of THE LEGITIMATE VAMPIRE.
* Philostratus relates that the Indians destroy the most
monstrous serpent by spreading _golden_ letters, on a field
of _red_, before his hole. They dazzle and confound him, and
he is taken without difficulty.
[Illustration: 121]
These Lords of pray'r and prey--that _band_, of Kings,
That Royal, rav'ning BEAST, whose vampire wings
O'er sleeping Europe treacherously brood,
And fan her into dreams of promised good,
Of Hope, of Freedom--but to drain her blood! Moore.
The End.
CATALOGUE
{114}
[Illustration: 122]
{115}
[Illustration: 123]
{116}
[Illustration: 124]
{117}
THE MAN IN THE MOON,
"If Caesar can hide the Sun with a blanket, or put the Moon in his
pocket, we will pay him tribute for light."--Cymbeline.
With Fifteen Cuts.
[Illustration: 125]
{118}
------"Is there not
Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven,
Red with uncommon wrath, to blast the men
Who owe their greatness to their country's ruin
{120}
Dedicated
[Illustration: 127]
THE MAN IN THE MOON,
A SPEECH FROM THE THRONE, TO THE SENATE OF LUNATARIA
[Illustration: 128]
INTRODUCTION.
I lately dream'd that, in a huge balloon,
All silk and gold, I journey'd to the Moon,
Where the same objects seem'd to meet my eyes
That I had lately left below the skies;
{121}
And judge of my astonishment, on seeing
All things exactly, to a hair, agreeing:
The mountains, rivers, cities, trees, and towers,
On Cynthia's silver surface, seem'd like ours;
Men, women, children, language, dress, and faces,
Lords, Commons, Lackies, Pensioners, and Places,
Whigs, Tories, Lawyers, Priests, and men of blood,
And even _Radicals_--by all that's good!
In a long street, just such as London's Strand is,
'Midst Belles and Beggars, Pickpockets and Dandies,
Onward I went, between a brazen horse,
And a large Inn which bore a Golden Cross,
Then through a passage, narrow, long and dark,
That brought my footsteps to a spacious park.
It chanc'd that morning that the Sovereign Dey,
The Prince of Lunataria pass'd that way--
Gods! what a sight! what countless crouds were there,
What yells, and groans, and hootings, rent the air!
By which, I learn'd, the Lunatarian nation
Are wont to testify their admiration;
We don't do so on earth--but that's no matter--
The Dey went onward, midst a hideous clatter
To meet the Senators; for'twas appointed,
That, on that morning, He--the Lord's anointed--
Should make a grand Oration from the throne,
That his most royal pleasure might be known.
{122}
Respecting certain great affairs of State:--
I heard the speech; Oh! could the muse relate
The "_elegance_ the sweet "_distinctiveness_"
With which his Royal Deyship did address
That reverend body of Moonarian sages,
I'd write a book that should endure for ages.
Alas! such heights are not for me to reach;
I'll therefore, from my note-book, take the Speech,
And you must say, as'tis by Pope exprest,
"Give all thou canst, and _we_ will dream the rest!"
[Illustration: 130]
{123}
[Illustration: 131]
THE SPEECH.
MY L--rds and G--tl--n,
I grieve to say,
That poor old Dad,
Is just as--bad,
As when I met you here
the other day.
{124}
'Tis pity that these cursed State Affairs
Should take you from your pheasants and your hares
Just now:
But lo!
Conspiracy and Treason are abroad!
Those imps of darkness, gender'd in the wombs
Of spinning-jennies, winding-wheels, and looms,
In Lunashire--
Oh, Lord!
My L--ds and G--tl--n, we've much to fear!
Reform, Reform, the swinish rabble cry--
Meaning, of course, rebellion, blood, and riot--
Audacious rascals! you, my Lords, and I,
Know 'tis their duty to be starved in quiet:
But they have grumbling habits, incompatible
With the repose of _our_ august community--
They see that good things are with us come-at-ible,
And therefore slyly watch their opportunity
To get a share;
Yes, they declare
That we are not God's favorites alone--
That _they_ have rights to food, and clothes, and air,
As well as you, the Brilliants of a throne!
Oh! indications foul of revolution--
The villains would destroy the Constitution!
{125}
I've given orders for a lot of Letters,
From these seditious, scribbling, scoundrels' betters
N--d--n and N--rr--s, F--ch--r, W--t and H--y
'To _lie_, for your instruction,'
Upon the table;
From which said premises you'll soon be able
To make a fair deduction,
That some decisive measures must be taken,
Without delay,
To quell the _Radicals_,
and save our bacon.
And now, my faithful C--m--ns,
You must find
The means to raise the wind:
For Derry Down, and Sid, have thought it wise,
To have--_besides the Spies_--
A few more Cut-throats, to protect the rhino
Of loyal people,--such as you and I know.
Van's estimates will come before you straight;
And, I foresee
That your opinions will with mine agree,
No lighter weight
Can well be placed on
{126}
[Illustration: 134]
Who is, you know,
a very willing hack.
The revenue has fluctuated
slightly--
See the _Courier_--
But it's been found to be
improving nightly--
For two weeks past,--
therefore we've nought to fear.
Some branches of our trade
are still deprest,
And those dependant on them
wanting food,
{127}
_But that's a sort of
temporary evil_--
'Twill wear away:
perhaps'tis for the best
At all events,'twill do no good
To let the starving wretches be uncivil.
Five years ago, you know, our sad condition
Was partly owing to
'_the quick transition
From war to peace_'--then,
we had '_scanty crops_'--
Then, something else--and now--
our weavers' shops
Are full of _Radicals_,
and _Flags_, and _Caps_;
But '_temporary_' still
are these mishaps--
The 'quick transition's' gone,
the 'crops' are good,
And though the _Radicals_
may still want food,
A few
{128}
[Illustration: 136]
STEEL LOZENGES
will stop their pain,
And set the Constitution
right again.
My L--ds and G--tl--n,
The foreign powers
Write me word frequently that they are ours,
Most truly and sincerely, in compliance
With our most
{129}
[Illustration: 137]
HOLY COMPACT AND ALLIANCE,
The purposes of which
I need not mention--
You that have brains can guess
at the intention.
'Tis my most anxious wish,
now we're at peace,
That all internal discontents
should cease--
T' accomplish which
I see no better way
Than putting one-eyed pensioners
on full pay.
{130}
'The body of the people, I do think,
are loyal still,'
But pray, My L--ds and G--tl--n,
don't shrink
From exercising all your care
and skill,
Here, and at home,
TO CHECK THE CIRCULATION
[Illustration: 138]
OF LITTLE BOOKS,
Whose very looks--
Vile '_two-p'nny trash_,'
bespeak abomination.
Oh! they are full of blasphemies
and libels,
And people read them
oftener than their bibles.
{131}
Go H--df----t, Y--rm--th, C--le--gh, and C--nil--g
Go, and be planning,
Within your virtuous minds, what best will answer
To save _our_ morals from this public cancer;
Go and impress, my friends, upon all classes,
From sleek-fac'd Swindlers down to half-starv'd Asses,
'That, from religious principles alone,'
(_Dont be such d----d fools as to blab your own_)
Temperance, chasteness, conjugal attention--
With other virtues that I need not mention--
And from subordination, and respect,
To every knave in robes of office deck'd--
'Can they expect to gain divine protection'
And save their sinful bodies from dissection!
{132}
His Highness ceased--
The dissonance of Babel
Rose from the motley
Moonitarian rabble:
The yell of loyalty--
the dungeon groan--
The shriek of woe--
the starving infant's moan
The brazen trumpets' note--
the din of war--
The shouts of freemen
rising from afar--
Darted in horrid discord
through my brain:--
I woke, and found myself
on Earth again.
[Illustration: 140]
{133}
THE RIGHT DIVINE OF KINGS TO GOVERN WRONG!
Dedicated to the Holy Alliance
By The Author Of The Political House That Jack Built.
[Illustration: 141]
{135]
Dedication.
TO
THE VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE MEMBERS OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE.
May it please your Holinesses,
When a gang of desperate ruffians disguise themselves, and take the road
armed, it is a sure sign of robbery and murder; and it becomes the duty
of an honest man to raise a _hue and cry_, and describe the villains.
With that view, I dedicate to you this little book; in the hope, that
some who understand the _dead_ lan-guage of Despotism, may be induced
to translate it into the _living_ tongues of the good people of the
Continent.
I pray God to take your Royalty into his immediate keeping.
{136}
O! Dulness, if thy sons can learn one thing,
Teach but that one, sufficient for a King;
That which _thy_ Priests, and _thine_ alone, maintain,
Which, as It dies, or lives, They fall, or reign:
May ye, O Cam and Isis, preach it long,
'The Right Divine of Kings to govern wrong!'
Pope.
It was a maxim of the Constitution of this country that the King could
do no wrong. He had high authority for stating that _the King could not
commit Folly, much less Crime._ --Report of a Bishop's Speech.
If a King can do no wrong, why was King James II. banished? and if a
King can do wrong, why the plague are we constantly affirming that he
cannot? Either way we should stand self-condemned, and if we are not
set down as a nation of scoundrels, we must think ourselves pretty easy
under the appellation of fools.--Swift,
----------We love
The King, who loves the law, respects his bounds,
And reigns content within them: him we serve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free:
But recollecting still that he is man,
We trust him not too far. King though he be,
And King in England too, he may be weak.
And vain enough to be ambitious still;
May exercise amiss his proper pow'rs,
Or covet more than freemen choose to grant:
Beyond that mark is TREASON.
--Cowper
{137}
PREFACE.
"Perish those poets, and be hush'd the song,
Which with this _nonsense_ charm'd the world so long,
That he who does no right, can do no wrong."
De Foe.
To condemn _nonsense_, especially in high places, is proper: there are
ancient precedents for it.
A thousand years before Christ, Nathan, a priest in the house of the
Lord at Jerusalem, knew that David the Lord's anointed, had not only
worked _folly_ in Israel, by committing adultery with a beautiful woman,
but had committed _crime_, by causing her husband to be put to death.
The honest priest charged both the folly and the crime upon the king!
He went up to his majesty with this Address: "_Thou art the man!_"
He prosecuted him at the bar of his own conscience, convicted him,
and passed sentence upon him--"_The sword shall not depart from thine
house!_"
Three thousand years after this, a priest, sent into an English House of
Lords by the nomination of the king, affirms there, that "he had 'high
authority' for stating, that the king could not commit _folly_. much
less _crime!"_ right? {138}If he does say this, I ask him, how
long, after oppression should be exercised through the prerogative by
virtually irresponsible ministers and be declared no wrong, he supposes
that a king of England could sit on the throne, or the bishops who
maintain the doctrine, sit either at its right hand in the Lords, or any
where else? I tell this bishop, that though the law may not suppose it
possible for a king of England to do wrong, because it intends him to
do right, yet if he _should_ do, and _continue_ to do, oppressive
wrong, not all the bishops of England, nor all the bayonets of all
the mercenaries of Europe, could keep that king upon the throne of an
oppressed people against their united will.
A king of England is not king in his own right, or by hereditary right.
The nation is not a patrimony. He is not king by his own power; but in
right of, and by the power of the law. He is not king above the law;
but by, or under, the law. All the authority that he has, is given to
him by law; and he can only rule _according_ to law: for were he to
rule _against_ the law, he would be _king_ against the law, and depose
himself. The law is the Sovereign, or paramount authority; hence,
a king of England is a subject; and in this respect, he and all the
people are upon a level before the law--they are all his fellow-subjects
; though, as chief magistrate, he is the _first_ subject of the law.
A king of England who regards the happiness of the people, and his own
safety, would not wish to be stronger {139}than the law founded on the
public will, makes him. More strength would be unnecessary to _his_
welfare, and hurtful to theirs. All power _over others_, from the
watch-box to the throne, tends to injure the understanding, and corrupt
the heart. A good King would not desire unlimited power; a bad one
would abuse it. He would become mad; and drive the people mad. A despot
is a demon. Artillery and fetters with the royal robe flung over
them--a cannon ball capped with the royal crown--animated by the royal
will--crushing, burning, and butchering liberty, property, and human
life--personify the power of an unlimited King.
The ensuing satire shows the folly and danger of such power. It is a
partial revival of the _Jure Divino_, written by Daniel De Foe in 1706.
After the lapse of a century, nearly the same reason exists for the
publication as the author adduced on its first appearance. It had never
appeared, he says, "had not the world seemed to be going mad a second
time with the error of passive obedience and non-resistance." It is not
precisely so now: the _people_ have not gone mad, but a _bishop_ has,
who may bite his brethren; and there is a slavish party of High Church
zealots and pulpit casuists in the country who virtually support the
doctrine--although if they attempt reducing it to practice, they may
dig a pit beneath the throne, and engulph the dynasty. To expose this
destructive doctrine, and disentangle the threads so artfully twisted
into snares for the unwary by {140}priestcraft, De Foe composed his
Satire. He was the ablest politician of his day, an energetic writer,
and, better than all, an honest man; but not much of a poet. The _Jure
Divino_ is defective in arrangement and versification. It is likewise
disfigured by injudicious repetition; a large portion is devoted to the
politics of the time, and it is otherwise unfit for republication entire
; but it abounds with energetic thoughts, forcible touches, and happy
illustrations. The present is an attempt to separate the gold from the
dross. The selection is carefully made; from the parts rejected the
best passages are preserved, the rhyme and metre are somewhat bettered,
the extracts are improved and transposed, and many additions of my own
are introduced. The production scornfully rejects the slavish folly,
senseless jargon, and venal hypocrisy, which pretend that power is from
God and not from the People. It defies those who draw upon scripture in
support of _Divine Right_ to show that scripture lays down any rules of
_political_ government, or enjoins any _political_ duties; or that
it does not leave the people to determine by their own reason what
government and what governors are best for themselves. It is a forcible
and argumentative satire against the _nonsense_ from hole-and-corner
and lawn-sleeve men; and presents a series of peculiarly strong and
quotable lines, to engraft on the common sense of the free-minded,
honest, and open-hearted of my countrymen. If it aids them in the
occasional illustration and emphatic expression of {141}their opinions,
the pains I have taken will be rewarded.
There is another reason for publishing this satire, besides the revival
of Priestcraft. Its twinbrother is alive. Kingcraft rears up its
terrific mass, muffled in the mantle of Legitimacy; its head cowled
and crowned, aud dripping with the holy oil of Divine Right; its eyes
glaring deadly hate to human happiness; its lips demanding worship for
itself. Denouncing dreadful curses against the free, and yelling forth
threatenings and slaughter, it stamps with its hoof, and coils together
its frightful force to fall on young Liberty and squelch it. Its red
right-arm is bared for the butchery of the brave who love Freedom and
dare contend for it. It has prepared its chains and dug its dungeons,
erected its scaffolds, aud sharpened its axes for the wise and
excellent of the earth; and its bloody banners are unfurled in insolent
anticipation of unholy triumph!--
------Still monarchs dream
Of universal empire growing up
From universal ruin! Blast the design,
Great God of Hosts, nor let thy creatures fall,
Unpitied victims at ambition's shrine!
So prayed the Bishop of London, (Porteus--not Howley) and so fervently
prays,
The Author Of The Political House That Jack Built.
{142}
THE SPIRIT OF DESPOTISM.
The above Rare and Extraordinary Book was privately printed in 1795,
without the name of either printer or bookseller, and so effectually
suppressed, that there are only two copies of it besides my own in
existence.
Its real value consists in exhibiting an entire and luminous view of the
causes and consequences of Despotic Power. Its enthusiastic and glowing
love of Liberty is unexcelled by any work written since; and for
clearness, richness, and beauty of style, it is superior to every
production of the Press within the same period All that the author
touches, he turns into gold. I regret to say that most probably I shall
never be at liberty to disclose his name.
Naturally desirous that such a work should be perused by all England, I
have reprinted it, verbatim, from my own copy; and, although containing
as much in quantity as a volume of Gibbon's History of Rome, it is sold
for _Eighteen-pence_.
WILLIAM HONE.
The _French_, instantly perceiving the transcendent
merit of the Spirit of Despotism, and its high importance at
this crisis, have translated it into their language, and it
is now read throughout France with the greatest avidity. I
intreat some good _Neapolitan_ to be the benefactor of his
Countrymen in like manner. It should be in the hands of the
free, and those who desire to be free, in all nations;--
_Austria_, for instance.
{143}
THE RIGHT DIVINE OF KINGS TO GOVERN WRONG.
BOOK I.
Thus Kings were first invented, and thus Kings
Were burnish'd into heroes, and became
The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp;
Storks among frogs that have but croak'd and died!
Cowper.
_Original Power--The ancient Gods--Tyrant-kings--The Apotheosis of
James II. in the Chapel Royal--Charles II.--Paternal Government--God
prescribed no Rules of Government--Origin of Kings--Saul._
Arise, O Satire!--tune thy useful song,
Silence grows criminal, when crimes grow strong;
Of meaner vice, and villains, sing no more,
But Monsters crown'd, and Crime enrobed with Power!
At vice's high Imperial throne begin,
Relate the _ancient_ prodigies of sin;
With pregnant phrase, and strong impartial verse,
The crimes of men, and crimes of Kings rehearse!
What though thy labour shall to _us_ be vain,
And the World's bondage must _its time_ remain;
Let willing slaves in golden fetters lie,
There's none can save the men who _will_ to die.
{144}
Yet some there are that would not tamely bow,
Who fain would break their chains, if they knew how;
And these, from thy inspired lines, may see,
How they choose bondage when they may go free.
He that can levy War with all mankind,
Retard the day-spring of the human mind;
Buy Justice, sell Oppression, bribe the Law,
Exalt the Fool, and keep the Wise in awe;
With pious Peter, * cant of heaven's commands,
Pray with his lips, and murder with his hands;
Insult the wretched, trample on the poor,
And mock the miseries mankind endure;
Can ravage countries, property devour,
And trample Law beneath the _feet of Power_;
Scorn the restraint of oaths and promised Right, **
And ravel compacts in the people's sight;
* Peter the Cruel, King of Caslile He married the daughter
of a Duke of Bourbon, whom he divorced, in order to renew
his connexion with a former mistress. His excesses
occasioned the people to dethrone him. He affected piety,
and to govern by divine right!
** Despots seldom keep engagements.--The People of Prussia
have a 'promised right' from their king of some years
standing. After the Battle of Waterloo, he promised them a
Constitution--but became a member of the Holy Alliance. In
1814, this king, with another of the fraternity, the Emperor
of Russia, was entertained at an expense of 20,028L. 7s.
10d. in Guildhall London, by the Corporation in Common
Council assembled, who also presented addresses of
congratulation to the worthies, on their having contributed,
by encaging Napoleon, to restore what the addresses called,
"the Legitimate dynasties." The result is, that the
legitimate Emperor of Russia backs the crusade on the People
of Naples; and the legitimate king of Prussia is as little
inclined to let the Prussians have a Constitution, as the
Corporation of London find it convenient to return the
14,000L. of the Bridge-House money which they borrowed
towards paying for the feast. The 'company they kept' and
the money they owe in consequence, must be a satisfactory,
because the only apology from the metropolis of the most
free country in Europe, to the Neapolitans, for not
assisting them in defending their national Independence, and
their new-born Liberty, against the combined attack of "the
Legitimate dynasties."
{145}
_That_ thing's a Tyrant!--and that _People Fools_,
_Who basely bend to be that Tyrant's tools!_
Examine then the early course of things,
And search the ancient roll of Tyrant Kings,
When the first man usurp'd upon his kind,
Assumed exotick right, assuming reigned;
Supreme in wickedness, more wicked grew;
First _forced_ a homage, then decreed it _due_.
Trace the first Tyrants to their fancied thrones,
Placed in that heaven that all their crimes disowns:--
If in the Royal lists some monsters reign'd,
Abborr'd by heaven, and hated by mankind,
By lust and blood exalted to a throne,
For all the exquisites of Tyrant known,
The meaner name of monarch they despise,
Alive, usurp the throne, and dead, the skies;
Above the clouds th' incarnate devil stands,
And nations worship with polluted hands!
Old Saturn, Bacchus, and high-thundering Jove,
And all the rabble of the Gods above,
Whose names for their immortal crimes are fear'd,
Monarchs and Tyrant-princes first appear'd;
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By rapes and blood the path to greatness stain'd,
By rapes and blood the glittering station gain'd;
Succeeding knaves succeeding Gods became,
And sin aspired to an immortal name!
The mighty wretches dwell among the stars,
And vice in virtue's glorious robes appears;
And Poets celebrate their praises there,
As Indians worship Devils that they fear!
Yet let us look around the world awhile,
And find a Patron-God for Albion's Isle;
Has she so many Tyrants borne in vain?
Has she no Star in the celestial train?
Heaven knows, the difficulty only lies,
In who's the fittest monster for the skies!--
Satire, reflect with care, due caution give,
Some -------- are dead, beware of those that live.
If thou too near the present age begin,
Truth will be crime, and courage will be sin!
Look back two ages, see where shines on high
Great James, the modern Bacchus of the sky;
But give him time before his ghost appear,
Lest his uneasy fame bewray his fear:
Alive, the patron of the tim'rous race,
Fear in his head, and frenzy in his face;
His constellation, were it felt beneath,
Would make men strive to die--for fear of death!
His exaltation with his crimes begin,
See how we worship in his _House of Sin_,
Aloft--we view the Bacchanalian King;
Below--the sacred anthems daily sing;
His vast excess the pencil's art displays,
And triumphs in the clouds above our praise:
{147}
What can, with equal force, devotion move,
We pray below, and He's debauch'd above!*
Look lower down the galaxy and see,
In yon crown'd Goat another Deity;
His orgied reel and lecherous leer outvie
The old Priapian glory of the sky;
His furious lusts the other Gods deface
And spread his viler image through the place;
On obscene altars blaze unholy fires
To him, the God of all unchaste desires! **
* The Banqnetling House at Whitehall is now the Chapel
Royal, where sermons are preached and Divine service is sung
by the choir of the king's household. On the floor, are the
pews for the congregation, the pulpits of the clergy, the
altar with the sacramental vessels, and the other
arrangements for sacred wor-ship. On the ceiling, the
apotheosis of King James the First, painted by Rubens,
represents the king in different situations crowned with the
triumphs of drunkenness.
James the First held the highest notions concerning Divine
Right. He had a mighty desire to be a great tyrant, but was
merely a great driveller. He said on a certain occasion that
"_there is an implicit tie among kings, which obligeth them,
though there be no other interest or particular engagement,
to stick to, and right one another, upon an insurrection of
subjects._"--How-ell's Letters, B. 1. §. 2. Letter iii.
This obligation among kings _to right one another_, flows
from their 'Right Divine to govern wrong!' The _implicit
tie_ to suffo-cate liberty, wherever it appears, is co-eval
with tyranny--but it was never _openly_ avowed until the
present concert of kings. The Holy Alliance is--Despotism
shewing itself.
** It was for this king, Charles II., that the phrase, "our
Religious king," was invented by the Bishops.
If such Vicegerents are by Heaven appointed,
The Devil himself may be the Lord s anointed!
--De Foe
{148}
We turn disgusted from the contemplation
Nor seek more royal samples of our nation;
But leave Posterity to find the place
Of other heroes, of another race.
Europe, thy thrones have many a name in store,
As bright in guilt as any crown'd before;
Who, turn'd to Gods, shall shine in Poets' rhymes,
And faithful Hist'ry shall record their crimes.
The first _Paternal_ ruler of mankind
That e'er by primogenial title reign'd,
In dignity of government was high
But all his kingdom was his family.
His subjects--were his household and his wife;
His power--to regulate their way of life;
His sway--extended not beyond his gate;
That was the limit--of his regal state;
And every son might from his rule divide,
Be King himself, and by himself preside;
And when he died, the government went on
In natural succession to his son.
Next Families of mutual love and unity
Together join'd for friendship and _community_;
Form'd Laws, and _then_ the natural order was
To trust some man to execute the Laws.
Hence him they best could trust, they trusted--chose;
And thus a _Nation_ and a chief arose,
Both constituted by a mutual trust;
The people honest and the ruler just. *
* No hereditary king ever reigned in the world, but to
govern by laws and constitutions which were established
_before_ he came to be king.--Coke's Detection, vol. i. p.
13.
{149}
'Tis plain, when man came from his Maker's hand,
He left him free, and at his own command;
Gave him the light of nature to direct,
And reason, * nature's errors to inspect;
No rules of Government were e'er set down,
Nature was furnish'd to direct her own;
The high unerring light of Providence,
Left that to latent cause and consequence.
* Reason is the image of God stamped upon man at his birth,
the understanding breathed into him with the breath of life,
and iu the participation of which alone he is raised above
the brute creation, and his own physical nature!--Reason is
the queen of the moral world, the soul of the universe, the
lamp of human life, the pillar of society, the foundation of
law, the bea-con of nations, the golden chain let down from
heaven, which links all animated and all intelligent natures
in one common system--and, in the vain strife between
fanatic iuuovation and fauatic prejudice, we are exhorted to
dethrone this queen of the world, to blot out this light of
the mind, to deface this fair co-lumn, to break in pieces
this golden chaiu!--Hazlitt's Political Essays, p. 57.
Society to regulation tends,
As naturally as means pursue their ends;
The wit of man could never yet invent,
A way of life without a government;
And government has always been begun,
In those who, to be govern'd, gave the crown.
He that would other schemes of rule contrive
And search for powers the people could not give,
Must seek a spring which can those powers convey,
And seek a People too that will obey.
At length paternal rule was less complete,
And as mankind increas'd became unfit;
The petty Lords grow quarrelsome and proud,
And plunge their little governments in blood.
{150}
The factious rivals on pretence of _right,_
Urge on the people to contend and fight;
Invaded weakness to brute force submits,
Oppression rages, honesty retreats,
Justice gives way to power, and power prevails,
And universal slavery entails.
Thus broils arose, and thus the ends of life
Are miss'd in Wars and undecided strife!
Scotland, till late, exemplified the plan,
In many a feud, in many a Highland clan.
The Chief with whoop and whistling trumpet shrill,
Summons his slaves from ev'ry neighb'ring hill;
Tells them, his foeman's bull has stol'n his cow,
And dire revenge th' obedient vassals vow;
With mighty targe, and basket-hilted knife,
Battle and blood decide the petty strife;
The namelings fight, because the lord commands,
And wild confusion rules th' ungovern'd lands!
The _hunter-tribes_, at first, wild beasts pursued,
And then to chase mankind they left the wood;
Became Banditti, Captains, Chieftains, Kings,
And Tyrants, by the natural course of things!
As he that ravaged most could rule the best,
So he grown King that first subdued the rest,
By fraud and force his _guilty power_ maintains,
Wheedles mankind to please themselves with chains,
With selfish Kingcraft calls it Right Divine,*
And subtle Priestcraft sanctifies his _line_.
*Priestcraft n. s. [priest and craft.] Religious frauds;
management of wicked priests to gain power.--Johnson.
Kingcraft n. s. [king and craft.] Royal frauds;
management of wicked kings to gain power.
{151}
"Kings are as Gods."--Indeed!--why then they must
Like God be _sacred_,--but like God _be just_.
If in a King a vicious lust prevails,
The people see it, and the Godship fails. *
* The time has been when rulers have actually claimed the
title of _God's vicegerents,_ and have been literally
worshipped as gods by the servile crew of courtiers;--men
gradually bowed down by despotism from the erect port of
native dignity, and driven, by fear, to crouch under the
most degrading of all superstition, the political idolatry
of a base fellovv-creature.--After all the lan-guage of
court adulation, the praises of poets and oiators, the
statues and monuments erected to their fame, the malignant
consequences of their actions prove them to have been no
other than conspirators against the improvement and happi-
ness of the human race. What were their means of conduct-ing
their governments, of exercising this office of Heaven's
vicegerents? Crafty, dishonest arts, oppression, extortion,
and, above all, fire and sword. They dared to ape the
thunder and lightning of Heaven, and, assisted by the
machinations of the grand adversary of man, rendered their
imitative contrivances for destruction more terrible and
deadly than the original. Their imperial robe derived its
deep crimson colour from human blood; and the gold and
diamonds of their diadems were accumulated treasures wrung
from the famished bowels of the poor, born only to toil for
others, to be robbed, to be wounded, to be trodden under
foot, and forgotten in an early grave. How few, in com-
parison, have reached the age of three score and ten, and
yet, in the midst of youth and health, their days lifive
been full of labour and sorrow. Heaven's vicegerents seldom
bestowed a thought npon them, except when it was necessary
either to inveigle or to force them to take the sword and
march to slaughter. Where God caused the sun to shine gaily,
and scattered plenty over the land, his vicegerents diffused
famine and solitude. The valley, which laughed with corn,
they watered with the tear of artificial hunger and distress
; the plain that was bright with verdure, and gay with
flowerets, they dyed red with gore. They operated on the
world as the blast of an east wind, as a pestilence, as a
deluge, as a conflagration.--It is an incontrovertible
axiom, that all who are born into tlie world, have a right
to be as happy in it as the un-avoidable evils of nature,
and their own disordered passions will allow. The gtand
object of all good government, of all govern-ment that is
not an usurpation, must be to promote this happi-ness, to
assist every individual in its attainment and security. A
government chiefly anxious about the emoluments of office,
chiefly employed in augmenting its own power, and
aggrandizing its obsequious instruments, while it neglects
the comfort and safety of individuals in middle or low life,
is despotic and a nui-sance. It is founded on folly as well
as wickedness, and, like the freaks of insanity, deals
mischief and misery around, without be-ing able to ascertain
or limit its extent and duration. If it should not be
punished as criminal, let it be cosrced as dangerous. --
Spirit of Despotism, p. 90.
The greatest curses any age have known
Have issued from the temple, or the throne;
Extent of ill from kings at first begins,
But priests must aid, and consecrate their sins.
The tortured subject might be heard complain,
When sinking nnder a new weight of chain,
Or more rebellious, might perhaps repine,
When tax'd to dow'r a titled concubine,
But the priest christens all a _Right Divine! _
_Hor. Walpole's Epistle from Florence._
{152}
Talks he of 'sacred' _then_,--the man's a fool;
His high pretence a joke and ridicule;
Abandon'd to his crimes he soon will find
Himself abandon'd too, by all mankind;
With th' Assyrian Monarch turn'd to grass,
As much a Tyrant, and as much an ass!
{153}
Externals take from _Majesty_, the rest
Is but--a thing at which we laugh--_a jest!_
Let us to Scripture History appeal,
And see what truths its ancient rolls reveal:--
That great authority which Tyrants boast,
As most confirming, will confound them most!
When Israel with unheard of murmurs first,
Pray'd to indulgent Heaven they might be curst,
Rejected God, scorn'd his Almighty rule,
And made themselves their children's ridicule,
A standing banter, future ages' jest,
As damn'd to slavery at their own request--
With what just arguments did Samuel plead,
Give them the Tyrant's character to read;
Explain the lust of an ungovern'd man,
Show them the danger, preach to them in vain;
Tell them the wretched things they'd quickly find,
Within the pleasing name of King combined;
Deign with their'wilder'd crowds t' expostulate,
And open all the dangers of their fate!--
Yet they sought ruin with unwearied pains,
And begg'd for fetters, slavery, and chains!
But, it's replied, heaven heard its suppliant's prayer,
Itself chose out the King, and plac'd him there;
Disown'd the People's right, and fix'd their choice
In providence, and not the people's voice;
From whence the claim of right by regal line,
Made Israel's Kings be Kings by Right Divine.
Yes, Saul was King by God's immediate hand--
But' _twas in judgment to afflict the land!_
In granting He corrected the request,
A king He gave them, but _withheld the rest;_
{154}
Gave all that they pretended to require,
But in the gift he punish'd the desire;
He gave a plague, the very selfsame thing
They ask'd, when they petition'd for a King!
For 'tis remarkable when Samuel saw,
They'd have a King in spite of sense or law,
He told the consequences to the land,
And all the mischiefs that the Word contain'd;
Told them, that Kings were instruments design'd,
Not to improve, but to correct mankind!
Told them the Tyrant would insult their peace,
And plunder them of all their happiness!
Told them, that Kings were but exalted thieves,
Would rob men first, and then would make them slaves!
Then drew the picture of a monster crown'd,
Ask'd them, if such a villain could be found, *
Whether they'd like him, and their tribute bring?
They answer, Yes:--let such a man be King!
* It is remarkable, that a king scarcely ever exercised
tyran-nical power over the people, but it was mingled with
ungoverned vice in himself. Men of virtue and moderation
seldom, if ever, turn tyrants. Despotic rule gives the reins
to lust, and makes the errors of government, and the crimes
of life, mix together. It is the high road to cruelty and
brutalizing selfishness.--A king of France took out his
watch when he guessed that the axe was cutting off the head
of his favoritè, and said; 'My dear friend must make a sad
figure just now!'--A hill in Richmond Park is still shewn as
remarkable for having been the station from whence Henry
VIII. eagerly looked out for the ascent of a rocket at
London, announcing to the impatient tyrant the precise
moment when one of his wives was suffering death on the
scaffold!
And is a Tyrant King your early choice?
"_Be Kings your plague!_" said the Eternal's voice;
And with this mighty curse he gave the crown,
And Saul, to Israel's terror, mounts the throne!
Now, Muse, the parallel with caution bring,
On what condition was this man their King?
{155}
Tho' Heaven declar'd him, heaven itself set down
The sacred _Postulata_ of the crown;
Samuel examin'd first the high record,
Then dedicates the substance to the Lord.
This is the _coronation-oath_, the bond,
The steps on which the throne and kingdom stand;
For which, by future Kings unjustly broke,
God, and the People, mighty vengeance took! *
* Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and
wrote it in a book and laid it up before the Lord. (1
Samuel, x. 25.) It is plain, the word manner signifies the
constitution of the government, or the conditiom on which
Saul was to be king, namely, according to justice and law;
and this is meant in frequent expressions, by going in and
out before them, referring to justice being executed in the
gates, and peace and war; the king was to lead them in one,
and direct in the other. This manner of the kingdom was told
to all the people, and that implied, that the consent of the
people was requisite to make him king, without which, though
Samuel had anointed him, he was not owned by the Israelites,
bnt went about his private affairs till after the victory
over the Ammonites. Then the manner of the kingdom was
written in a book--a token of its being a compact between
Saul and the people; and Samuel's laying it up before the
Lord, is equivalent to an oath recorded on both sides; for
it was there as a witness between the king and the people,
and served both as their oath of allegiance, and his oath of
government.--All this being done, what followed? All the
people went to Gilgal, and there they (mark the word) made
Saul king.--(l Samuel,i. 15.)
{156}
Then mark the needful steps to make him King,
How sacred ends, concurring means must bring;
Not Samuel's ointment, not the mighty lot,
Could make him King, nor force his title out.
The people like not his mechanic race,
They see no greatness in his youthful face:--
"Is this the monarch shall our foes destroy,
Does heaven design to rule us by a _boy_?"
The flouting Rabbies cry! "We scorn to own,
A man that has no merit for a crown.
Our King must lead the glorious tribes to fight,
And chase the thousands of the Ammonite:
His pers'nal valour must our triumphs bring,
'Tis such a man we want, and such a King."
Away they go, reject his government,
Not Heav'n's high choice could force their due consent!
Samuel submits, adjourns the strong debate,
Suspends the King he offered to create;
Owns _their dislike's a high material thing,
That their Consent alone could make him King!_
Why did not God displeasure then express,
Resent the slight, and punish their excess;
Extort obedience by express command,
And crown his choice by his immediate hand;
Destroy the Rebels with his blasting breath,
And punish early treason with their death;
With mighty thunders his new King proclaim,
And force the trembling tribes to do the same?
Because He knew it was the course of things,
And _Nature's law_, that men should _choose_ their Kings;
He knew the early dictate was his own,
That reason acted from himself alone.*
* It is alledged, that the vulgar are not capable of judging
coucerning principles of government; I answer, they are
then not capable of beiug guilty of transgression; for where
there is a want of capacity of judgment, there can be no
sin. This is a dangerous argument, my Lords, and exposes
government to the violence of every one who can overturn it
with impunity. You have no defence against any person in
this case who is resolute, except superior strength; for
the gallows will not frighten a man who is not conscious of
guilt, if he has any degree of natural fortitude. Try to
persuade the vulgar that there is any case in which they
cannot sin, and you will soon perceive what opera-tion it
will have upon them. But when you tell them they are not
judges of your manouvres of state, they will soon tell you
that they cannot transgress what they do not understand and
that you require of them more than the Deity requires of
them, or even supposes; for he requires no duty without
first allowing men to judge of his laws, and makes no laws
beyond the reach of their understandings.
_Sermons to Asses, ( Ministers qf State,)_ p. 57
{157}
"'Tis just," says the Almighty Power, "and sense,"
(For _actions are the words of Providence_;
The mouth of consequences speaks aloud,
And Nature's language is the voice of God:
"'Tis just," says he, "the people should be shown,
The man that wears it, can deserve the crown.
Merit will make my choice appear so just,
They'll own him fit for the intended trust;
Confirm by reason my exalted choice,
And make him King by all the people's voice.
{158}
Let Ammon's troops my people's tents invade,
And Israel's trembling sons, to fear betray'd,
Fly from th' advancing legions in the fright,
Till Jabesh' walls embrace the Ammonite;
I'll spirit Saul, and arm his soul for war,
The boy they scorn, shall in the field appear;
I'll teach the inexperienced youth to light,
And flesh him with the slaughter'd Ammonite.
The general suffrage then lie'll justly have
To rule the people he knows how to save;
Their willing voices all the tribes will bring,
And make my chosen hero be their King."
He speaks, and all the high events obey,
The mighty voice of Nature leads the way;
The troops of Ammon Israel's tents invade,
His mighty fighting sons, to fear betray'd,
Fly from th' advancing squadrons in the fright,
'Till Jabesh' walls embrace the Ammonite.
Saul rouzes; God had arm'd his soul for war;
The boy they scored does in the field appear;
His pers'nal merit now bespeaks the throne,
He beats the enemy, and wears his crown.
The willing tribes their purchased suffrage bring,
Their universal voice proclaims him King.
As if Heaven's call had been before in vain,
Saul from this proper minute, dates his reign.
The text is plain, and proper to the thing,
Not GOD--but all The People made him King!
End of Book I.
{159}
THE RIGHT DIVINE OF KINGS TO GOVERN WRONG.
BOOK II.
The King is ours
T' administer, to guard, t' adorn the State,
But not to warp or change it.
Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love
Of kings, between your Loyalty and ours
Our love is principle, and has its root
In reason; is judicious, manly, free:
Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,
And licks the foot, that treads it in the dust.
_The Duty of Resistance to Tyrants--Law--Custom--
Packed Juries--The Custom of Kings to tyrannize--
The Custom of the People to dethrone them instanced in
James II.--Rehoboam--Royalty a trust._
Were I permitted to inspect the rolls,
Th' eternal archives, hid beyond the poles;
The cause of causes could I but survey,
And see how consequences there obey:
This should be first of all that I'd enquire,
And this to know, the bounds of my desire--
Why Justice reels beneath the blows of might,
And Usurpation sets her foot on right;
Why fame bestows her ill-deserv'd applause,
When outrage, triumphs over nature's laws;
{160}
Why heaven permits the worst of men to rule,
And binds the wise man to obey the fool; *
Why its own thunder does not strike the crown,
And from the stools of pow'r thrust Tyrant? down;
Why it pursues the murd'rer's meaner crime,
But leaves exalted criminals to time.
* It is difficult to avoid laughing at the _extreme
ignorance of crowned heads_ themselves, in despotic
countries, wheu one contrasts it with the importance they
assume, and the pomp and splendour with which they transfer
their royal persons from place to place. The sight is truly
ludicrous. Are these the men, _occupied, as they usually
are, in the meanest trifles and the most degrading
pleasures,_ who tell us that the governmen over which they
preside, is a perfect system, and that the wisest
philosopher knows not how to govern mankind; that is, to
consult their happiness and security, so well as themselves,
neglected as they have been in youth, and corrupted in
manhood by panders to their vices, and flatterers of their
foibles, their pride, and their ambition? There is reason
to believe that _many kings in despotic kingdoms, have been
worse educated, and possess less abilities, than a common
charity-boy, trained in a parish school to read and write._
Spirit of Despotism. An Anecdote, containing the thoughts of
a Despot is a treat. It appears from the Emperor of Austria
heading the Holy Alliance against Naples with our money in
his pockets, as well as from a letter dated Laybach, 28th
January, 1821, that his Majesty has the _horrors._ The
letter states, that when the Professors of the Lyceum at
Laybach were presented to him, he made this nervous speech
:--"Gentlemen--The students of Carniola have always deserved
praise, (from which their progress in useful knowledge may
be inferred). Endeavour to preserve for them this good
character, (modern Boeotians). Remain ever faithful to what
is ancient, (Tyranny); for what is ancient is good, (he
means for himself); and onr ancestors (his Ancestors) ever
found it so. Why should it not be the same to us? (The
throne-men). People (tyrant-hater's) are occupied elsewhere
(at Naples) with new notions (principles of liberty), that I
(heigh Oh!) cannot approve, (cannot help); and never shall
approve, (Royal till death). From such notions (political
truth) preserve yourselves, (God preserve the Emperor);
attach yourselves to nothing bnt what is positive,
(Despotism). I do not want learned men (the students at
Copenhagen on the king's birth-day, January 2nd, 1821,
shouted "Vivat Rex the soldiers, not understanding Loyally
in Latin, and, supposing the students uttered seditious
cries, dispersed them with their sabres and hilled four:
ergo Steel is stronger than Latin). I want only loyal and
good subjects, (implicitly obedient slaves); and it is your
part to (become drill serjeants, and) form them (into line).
He who serves (implicitly obeys), will instruct, (that is--
keep the students stupid) according to my orders; and
whoever feels himself incapable of that, (non-instruction,)
and embraces novel ideas, (knowledge,) had better depart--or
I shall myself remove him, (by putting something into his
head!). This is a fine and perfect specimen of legitimate
mind; and here is another:--At the Museum of Bologna the
Professors of the University shewed this same Emperor one or
Sir Humphrey Davy's safety lamps, and informed him that the
Englishman its inventor, had, by his nnmerous discoveries,
produced a revolution in science. At the word revolution
the countenance of the Emperor changed; he rumped the
attendant, and said, the King of England would no doubt feel
the consequences of his condescension to his unruly
subjects; but, as to himself, he should take proper care
not to suffer any of his subjects to make revo-lutions!--
"_What is ancient is good._" Stick to that, Despots! Yonr
ancestors,'an please your Majesties, groped without safety
lamps --I pray that you may, till you be no more.
{161}
Kings spurn at limitations, laws, and rules,
And rob mankind--because mankind are fools;
Wheedled to act against their common sense,
To jumble tyranny with providence;
To hope from God what God expects from them,
For what they ought to do, look up to Him;
Leave unperform'd the duties which they know,
And _lift up_ hands they should _employ_ below!
Christians must no more miracles expect,
The men that will be slaves, He'll not protect;
God never will our base petitions hear,
Till our endeavours supersede our prayer;
Not always then; but nation's may be sure,
The _willing_ bondage _ever_ shall endure.
They that would have His power to be their friend,
Must, with what power they have, their right defend.
The laws of God, God makes us understand,
The laws of Nature never countermand.
Nature prescribes, for'tis prescrib'd to sense,
Her first of laws to man--is self-defence.
This then is Law to man, from God on high,
_Resisting_ live--or _unresisting_ die!
He always works by means, and means he'll bless,
With approbation, often with success.
Nor prayers nor tears will revolutions make,
Tyrants pull down, or irksome bondage break;
'Tis our own business; and He lets us know,
What is our business, he expects we'll do.
* God punishes bad kings and oppressors, as he does the rest
of mankind--through his instruments, The, People. It is the
only way by which he has ever made an example of tyrants as
a terror to others.
Tyrants sometimes in Revolutions fall,
Though their destruction's not design'd at all;
So hasty showers, when they from heav'n flow down,
Are sent to fructify, and not to drown;
And, in the torrent, if a drunkard sink,
'Tis not the flood that drowns him, but the drink,
Yet who would say, because a sinner's slain,
For fear of drowning, we must have no rain.
{163}
It's doubtful who live most unnatural lives,
The subject that his liberty survives,
Or kings that trample law and freedom down,
And make free justice truckle to the crown.
Law is the master-spring of government--
The only Right Ditine that heaven has sent, *
It forms the order of the world below,
And all our blessings from that order flow.
* The tyrant Henry VIII., by making himself the head of the
Church, clearly begat the Right Divine. The King could give
bishoprics, and the Bishops could give opinions. "Your
Majesty is the breath of our nostrils," said Bishop Neil to
James I., and speaking of himself and brethren as to worldly
advantages, he certainly spoke the truth. Before the Kings
of England were heads of the Church we heard little of
divine right, and some-times the Church itself was seen on
the side of freedom; since that time, never. The doctrine
in England, that the King can do no wrong, supposes the
positive responsibility of his Minis-ters. But, that it is a
dangerous licence of language, is wit-nessed iu a Right
Reverend exposition of this kingly privi-lege in regard to
Adultery. The Bishop leaped from political to moral
delinquency, with a casuistry worthy an admirer of the royal
power of translation. The Abbe de Choisy, a Priest of the
same school as the British Father in God, though not of the
same church, dedicated an edition of Thomas à Kempis, on the
'Imitation of Christ' to Madame de Maintenon, a courtesan
and mistress to Louis XIV., prefixing this motto: "Hear oh!
daugh-ter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also
thine own people, and thy father's honse; _so shall the
King greatly desire thy beauty!_" Psa. xlv. 10,11.
The Court's a golden but a fatal circle,
Upon whose magic skirts a thousand devils
In crystal forms, sit tempting innocence,
And beckon early virtue from its ceutre.
Anon, quoted by Dr. Watts.
{164}
Law is the life-blood of the social state;
Subordinate to law is magistrate,
To set the magistrate above the law,
Would all to error and confusion draw,
He's not a king that's not prescribed by laws--
King's, the effect, but government's the cause
Of all authority for Right Divine,
Custom's the worst, for every royal line.
The still-born Ignorance of antiquity,
Quirk'd into life to cozen freemen by,
Lawyers call Custom; and, for custom, draw
On custom still, to still call custom, _Law!_
So 'rules' the _Bench_, and so the maxim takes,
The fault one age commits, no age forsakes!
Begot by fools, maintain'd by knaves and fools,
Improved by craft in error's public schools;
With shifting face, with loose and stammering tongue,
The juggling fraud has plagued the world too long;
Modern encroachments on our freedom makes,
And backs it with our fathers' old mistakes:
As if our rev'rence, to their virtues due,
Should recommend their crimes and follies too!
This vapour Custom, this mere wand'ring cloud
Puffs the crown'd wretch, and helps to make him proud.
Persuades him to believe it must be true,
Homage to Law, becomes the _Tyrant's_ due!
{165}
Thus Priestcraft preaches, and thus Lawyers draw
An after age, to call a custom--Law!
And yet this boasted, ever-quoted thing,
Fails in the point--fails to support the king:
For though by custom, kings have learn'd to ride
A few vile minions, to support their pride,
The people always have opposed the cheat,
It never was their custom to submit;
The Practice of the people made the name,
For practices and customs are the same;
And custom this one mighty truth will tell,
When kings grow tyrants, nations will rebel.
The people may, for custom gives assent,
Dethrone the man, to save the Government!
If any say the practice is not so,
Let them to England for examples go.
England the Right Divine of kings profess'd *
And all the marks of slavery caress'd;
Long courted chains, but'twas in court disguise,
And holy fraud conceal'd the sacred lies--
* Sir Robert Filmer, the great champion of Divine Right
having defended it in print, Algernon Sidney drew out a
system of original power, and government according to the
laws of God, nature, and reason. Before it was finished, the
friends of Divine Right seized the manuscript, and finding
Sidney's arguments un-answerable, they laid aside the work,
and fell upon the man; --so they cut off his head, merely
because they could not an-swer his book.
The Church the mountebank, the King the jest,
The _wheedled monarch_, and the _wheedling priest!_
James proved the patient, crouching, loyal tribe,
But let his fate their loyalty describe!
{166}
With life-and-fortune, churchmen back'd the crown, *
In crushing all men's freedom but their own.
* A Courtier's loyalty is charmingly pictured in the
portrait of Bubb Doddington, drawn by himself in his
celebrated Diary. He was by trade a Boroughmonger, and his
stock, consisted of six Members in the House of Commons,
which he jobbed about and sold to the best bidder. At the
close of his bargain and sale of the whole in a lump to the
Duke of Newcastle for the king's service, there is a finish
which renders the painting a fiue and matchless Cabinet
specimen.--Bubb, who had been in disgrace at court for
selling them elsewhere, said to tlie duke, "I knew I had
given no just cause of offence, but that I could not justify
it with His Majesty; that it was enough that He (the king)
was displeased, to make me think that I was in the wrong,
and to beg Him to forget it: I would not even be in the
right against HIM!" The duke was delighted with this loyal
and dutiful submission. Bubb says, "He took me up in his
arms, and kissed me twice!" and Bubb was rewarded for
laying his six members of the honorable house at the foot of
the throne with the price he stipulated for--namely, the
treasurership of the navy, and a peerage! The story was
beautifully and most impressively related by the excellent-
hearted and inflexible John Hunt, in his noble and
successful defence, on the trial of an ex officio
information for words in the Examiner charged not as false,
but as libellous on the Honorable House.
Then, under colour or pretence of law,
Villains their victims to the shambles draw,
Where sat the scoundrel Chief in ermined pride,
And a pack'd jury in the box beside.
The farce commences--justice heaves a groan--
The case is clear--a verdict for the Crown!
When noble Russell and brave Sidney fell,
Judges themselves rung, out Law's funeral knell!
{167}
Yet when their own destruction they foresaw,
The passive knaves cried Liberty and Law!
Took from their best of Kings his Right Divine,
And abrogated fealty to the line;
They made a precedent, dropp'd T from TReason,
And found the best of words behind it--reason!
The crown's a symbol, that the people meant,
To mark their choice, or form of government; *
The crown is theirs, and this has been their plan,
To make the office sacred, not the man:
Hence, if a tyrant on the throne appears,
The place is vacant, and the crown is theirs.
* All Majesty is derived from Law founded on right reason. A
strength beyond that is mere force. The Magistrate formerly
had no Majesty but while engaged in magisterial duties. His
real dignity consisting in his legal authority.
When the ancient parliaments of France met according to the
constitution annually, the king went to meet the members
seated in a waggon drawn by oxen, which a waggoner drove
with his goad to the parliament house; but he was in no
state until he was seated there, robed and crowned, and
sceptred. And, in-deed, in that place only, where the great
affairs of the Com-monwealth are transacted, can it be said,
that Real Majesty does truly and properly reside; and not
where the king plays, or dances, or prattles with his women,
when the vulgar are always styling him, your Majesty.
Hotomun's Franco-gallia, p. 73.
David, the patient tribes too much opprest,
Vex'd them with tribute, and deny'd them rest;
Harass'd the land with imposts and alarms,
Taxing and fighting--money! and to arms!
{168}
His son, however wise, disturbed their peace,
With taxes for his sumptuous palaces;
His love of women and his garish state,
His love of pomp and show, and looking great;
His building projects, and his vast designs,
Too vast for all the gold of Ophir's mines,
The people's hearts dismay'd, their feelings pain'd,
Their love unsettled, and their treasures drain'd. *
* Solomon could have but two occasions for money; one for
his costly buildings, the other for his numerous women, for
he never had any wars. To the expense of his buildings the
kings of other countries contributed largely; so that it
must have beeu his excesses in women, and other luxurious
indulgences, that caused him to oppress the people with
heavy burdens of taxes.
By two such' vigorous monarchs long opprest,
The next that came they loyally addrest;
Implored his gracious majesty would please
To tax them less, and let them live in peace.
The son of Solomon with anger hears
The people dare to offer him their pray'rs,
Spurns their Address, his rage no bounds restrain,
And thus he gives his answer with disdain:--
"I bear from Heaven the ensigns of my sway,
My business is to rule, and your's obey:
Therefore your scandalous Address withdraw,
'Tis my command, and my command's your law:
Sedition grows from seeds of discontent,
And faction always snarls at government:
But since my throne from God alone I hold,
To Him alone my councils I unfold;
My resolutions he has made your laws,
You are to know my actions, He the cause!
{169}
Wherefore I stoop, to let you understand,
I double all the taxes of the land.
And if your discontents and feuds remain,
Petition--and I'll double them again!
The mild correction which my Father gave,
Has spoil'd the people he design'd to save;
You murmur'd then, but had you thus been used,
You'd ne'er his easy clemency abused!"
The injured people, treated with disdain,
Found their Petitions and Addresses vain!
Long had they made submissions to the crown,
And long the love of Liberty had known;
The kings they ask'd of God had let them see,
What God himself foretold of tyranny.
The father had exhausted all their stores,
With costlyhouses, and more costly whores;
But doubly robb'd by his encroaching son,
They rather chose to die, than be undone;
And, thus resolving, by a single stroke,
Ten tribes revolted, and their bondage broke!
The tyrant, in his sceptred bloated pride,
Believing God and blood upon his side;
To the high altar in a rage repairs,
And rather tells his tale, than makes his prayers: *
* The author has taken a poetical licence here. For
scripture does not say that Rehoboam prayed to the Lord.
"Behold!" says he, "the slaves, o'er whom I reign,
Have made the pow'r I had from Thee in vain;
From thy diviner rule they separate,
And make large schisms both in Church and State;
My just intentions are, with all my force,
To check rebellion in its earliest course;
Revenge th' affronts of my insulted throne,
And save thy injured honour, and my own;
And as thy counsels did my fathers bless,
He claims thy help, who does their crown possess!"
{170}
Listen ye kings, ye people all rejoice,
And hear the answer of th' Almighty voice:
Tremble, ye tyrants, read the high commands,
In sacred writ the sacred sentence stands!
"_Stir not afoot!_ thy new-rais'd troops disband!"
Says the Eternal;--"it is my command!
I raised thy fathers to the Hebrew throne,
I set it up, but you yourselves pull down!
For when to them I Israel's sceptre gave,
'Twas not my chosen people to enslave.
My first command no such commission brings,
I made no tyrants, though I made you kings;
But you my people vilely have opprest,
And misapplied the powers which you possest.
'Tis Nature's laws the people now direct,
When Nature speaks, I never contradict.
Draw not the sword, thy brethren to destroy,
The liberty they have, they may enjoy;
I ever purposed, and I yet intend,
That what they may enjoy, they may defend;
They have deserted from a misused throne,
"The thing's from Me"--the crime is all thy own!"*
* When the ten tribes revolted from Rehoboam, and chose Je-
roboam king, there is no doubt they limited him by law; for
many years afterwards king Aliab, one of his succcssors,
admring a herb-garden near to his own palace, applied to the
owner, Naboth, and offered him either a vineyard for it, or
the worth of it in money; but Naboth would neither exchange
nor sell it, and Ahab returned home so vexed, that he went
to bed and would not eat any thing. Naboth having thus
displeased the king, the courtiers got up a charge of
Blasphemy and Sedition against him by means of false
wituesses hired on purpose; he was found guilty and
executed, and Ahab got possession of the garden, probably as
a forfeiture to the crown. It is clear, therefore, that
Ahab's power was restrained by law, for it was not until
Nabot was murdered _under the forms of law_, that the king
could get the poor man's property. Another thing is very
remarkable: as soon as the murder was completed, and the
king had got the garden, there was an honest Father in God,
who, instead of saying 'the king could do no wrong,' went to
his majesty, charged him with the crime, and denounced his
downfall, which happened accordingly, through his listening
to flattering ecclesiastics, and his fondness for military
affairs. If the Bishop of London should desire to preach on
this story, he is informed that he may find it in the Bible,
1 Kings, xxi.
{171}
If kings no more be flatter'd and deceived,
Nor shun too late, the knaves they have believed;
If as 'trustees for uses' they agree
To act by limited authority;
Subordination will its order keep,
Ambition die, and all rebellion sleep.
The weeping nations shall begin to laugh,
The subjects easy, and the rulers safe.
Plenty and peace embrace just government,
The king be pleased, the people be content.
If any king is hoodwink'd to believe,
People will blind obedience to him give;
Let him pause long, before he dares to try,
They all by practice give their words the lie! *
* Flattery is a fine picklock of tender ears; especially of
those whom fortune hath borne high upon their wings, that
submit their dignity and authority to it, by a soothing of
themselves. For, indeed, men could never he taken in that
abundance with the springes of others' flattery, if they
began not there; if they did but remember how much more
profitable the bitterness of truth were than all the honey
distilling from a whorish voice, which is not praise but
poison. But now it is come to that extreme of folly, or
rather madness, with some, that he that flatters them mo-
destly, or sparingly, is thought to malign them.
Ben Jonson.
The ears of kings are so tiugled with a continual uniform
ap-probation, that they have scarce any knowledge of true
praise. Have they to do with the greatest fool of all their
subjects--they have no way to take advantage of him: by the
flatterer saying, "It is because he is my king," he thinks
he has said enough to imply that he therefore suffered
himself to be over-come. This quality stifles and confuses
the other true and es-sential qualities which are sunk deep
in the kingship.
Montaigne.
{172}
Art may by mighty dams keep out the tide,
Check the strong current, and its streams divide;
Pen up the rising waters, and deny
The easy waves to glide in silence by:
But if the river is restrain'd too long,
It swells in silence to resent the wrong;
With fearful force breaks opposition down,
And claims its native freedom for its own.
So Tyranny may govern for a time,
Till Nature drowns the tyrants with their crime!
End of Book II.
{173}
THE RIGHT DIVINE OF KINGS TO GOVERN WRONG.
BOOK III.
----Nations would do well
T' extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of Heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their Toy--The World.
_Tyrants deposed to preserve the Throne--In Europe--In England before
the Conquest--By each other since.--No right line any where--Difference
between Tyrants and Kings--Government instituted by the People for their
oivn good--Tyrants treat men as cattle to be slaughtered--God decrees
their fall--Ordains Revolutions by the People._
Search we the long records of ages past,
Look back as far as antient rolls will last;
Beyond what oldest history relates,
While kings had people, people magistrates;
Nations, e'er since there has been king or crown,
Have pull'd down tyrants to preserve the throne.
The laws of nature then, as still they do,
Taught them, their rights and safety to pursue;
That if a king, who should protect, destroys,
He forfeits all the sanction he enjoys.
{174}
There's not a nation ever own'd a crown,
But if their kings opprest them, pull'd them down;
Concurring Providence has been content,
And always blest the action in th' event.
He that, invested with the robes of power,
Thinks'tis his right the people to devour,
Will always find some stubborn men remain,
That have so little wit, they won't be slain;
Who always turn again when they're opprest,
And basely spoil the gay tyrannic jest;
Tell kings--of Nature, Laws of God, and Right,
Take up their arms, and with their tyrants fight.
When passive thousands fall beneath the sword,
And freely die at the imperial word,
A stern, unyielding, self-defending few,
While they resist, will ravel all the clew;
Will all the engines of oppression awe,
And trample pow'r beneath the feet of law.
'Tis always natural for men opprest,
Whene'er occasion offers to resist;
They're traitors else to truth and common sense,
And rebels to the laws of Providence;
'Tis not enough to say, they _may_--they _must_;
The strong necessity declares it just; *
'Tis Heav'n's supreme command to man, and they
Are always blest who that command obey.
* If it be asked, Who shall be judge? it is plain that God
has made Nature judge. If a king make a law, destructive of
human society and the general good, may it not be resisted
and opposed? "No!" exclaim a junta of holy meu, "it is from
GOD!" What is _Blasphemy?_
{175}
So France deposed the Merovingian line,
And banish'd Childrick * lost the right divine;
So Holy League their sacred Henry ** slew,
And call'd a counsel to erect a new;
For right divine must still to justice bow,
And people first the right to rule bestow:
So Spain to arbitrary kings inured,
Yet arbitrary Favila *** abjured;
Denmark four kings deposed, and Poland seven,
Swedeland but one-and-twenty, Spain eleven:
Russia, Demetrius banish'd from the throne,****
And Portugal pull'd young Alphonsus down;
Each nation that deserves the name of state,
Has set up laws above the magistrate;
Hence, when a self-advancing wretch acquires
A lawless rule, his government expires.
* Childeric I. the son of Merovius, for his lasciviousness,
was banished by the great men, and one Egidiu?, a Gaul, set
up in his stead. Childeiic II. was banished and deposed by
his subjects, and king Pepin reigned in his stead; and so
ended the Merovingian family.
** The League deposed Henry III. and declared him a tyrant,
a murderer, and incapable to reign, and held frequent
counsels with the pope's legate and the Spaniards about
settling the crown, and several proposals were made of
settling it, sometimes on the infanta of Spain, at other
times on the cardinal of Boubon, the duke de Main, and
others.
*** Favila, a cruel tyrant, was deposed by the Castilians,
who chose judges to administer the government, till they
appointed another.
**** Besides the banishment of Demetrius, the History of
Russia furnishes a sickening catalogue of the butchery of
her despots by each other. During the debate in the House of
Lords on the 19th of February, 1821, Lord Holland, observing
on the Crusade of the Holy Alliance of Despots against
Naples, said, "That objections to the freedom of political
constitutions came but ungracefully from the reigning
Emperor of Russia, who ascended a throne reeking with the
blood of his own father: and as this member of that holy
league, owed his crown to the murder of his father, it
brought to his recollection, that since the time of the Czar
Peter I. no sovereign had ascended the throne of Russia
with-out its being stained with the blood of his immediate
predecessor, or some other member of his own family."
{176}
Explore the past, the steps of monarchs tread,
And view the sacred titles of the dead;
Look to the early kings of Britain's isle,
For _Jus Divinum_ in our _native_ style.
Conquest, or compacts, form the rights of kings,
And both are human, both unsettled things;
Both subject to contingencies of fate,
And so the godship of them proves a cheat.
The crowns and thrones the greatest monarchs have,
Were either stolen, or the people gave.
What claim had colonel Cnute, * or captain Suene?
What right the roving Saxon, pirate Dane?
Hengist, or Horsa, Woden's blood defied,
And on their sword, not right divine, relied.
* The leaders of the invading Saxons and Danes were mere
thieves and robbers, pretending to no light but that of the
sword. Hengist and Horsa were Saxon leaders, who after
conquering Kent, made themselves kings. Woden is famed to be
the first great leader of the Goths into Europe, and all
their kings affected to be thought of his predatory blood.
{177}
The Norman Bastard, how divine his call!
And where's his heav'nly high original?
These naked nations, long a helpless prey,
To foreign and domestic tyranny;--
Their infant strength unfit to guard their name--
Was left exposed to ev'ry robber's claim,
An open prey to pirates, and the isle,
To wild invaders, grew an early spoil.
The Romans ravaged long our wealthy coast,
And long our plains fed Caesar's num'rous host.
What birthright raised that rav'nous leader's name?
His sword, and not his fam'ly, form'd his claim.
Where'er the Roman eagles spread their wings,
They conquer'd nations, and they pull'd down kings;
Caesar in triumph o'er the whole presided,
And right of conquest half the world divided.
For Liberty our sires in arms appear'd,
And in its sacred name with courage warr'd;
Made the invaders buy their conquest dear,
And legions of their bones lie buried here. *
* The hillocks or barrows still remaining in most parts of
Eng-land were the graves of the soldiers. There are four
very large ones near Stevenage in Hertfordshire, close to
the road. The plains in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire are full
of these monuments of the valorous achievements of the
Britons iu defence of their liberty.
When these their work of slaughter had fulfill'd,
And seas of British blood bedew'd the field;
Shoals of Barbarian Goths, worse thieves than they,
From Caledonian Friths, and frozen Tay,
O'erspread the fruitful, now abandon'd plains,
And led the captured victims in their chains:
The weaken'd natives, helpless and distrest,
Doom'd to be plunder'd, ravish'd, and oppress'd,
Employ new thieves from the rude Northern coast,
To rob them of the little not yet lost.
{178}
The work once done, the workmen, to be paid,
Only demand themselves, and all they had!
In dreadful strife their freedom to maintain,
They fought with fury, but they fought in vain;
Yet, like Antaeus, every time they fell,
Their veins with rage and indignation swell;
Not for continued losses they despair,
But for still fiercer battle they prepare;
Again their blood the Saxon chariots stains,
And heaps of heroes strew th' ensanguin'd plains;
Thus, though they leave the world, they keep the field,
And thus their lives, but not their freedom yield.
Three hundred years of bloody contest past,
Plunder'd at first, and dispossest at last,
The few remains, with freedom still inspir'd,
To Western mountains, to resist retired;
Their dear abandon'd country thence they view,
And thence their thirst of Liberty renew;
Offers of peaceful bondage they defy,
What's peace to man without his liberty? *
* The Britons fought one hundred and sixty-three pitched
bat-tles. They might well be said to be conquered, for in
these prodigious straggles for their liberty they were
nearly all slain. They fought as long as there were any men
to be raised? but the Saxons swarming continually over from
vastly populous countries, the few Britons that remained,
took sanctuary in the wes-tern mountains of Wales, and from
the crags and cliffs, poor and distrest as they were, they
made constant inroads and excursions upon the Saxons; the
Saxon Annals are filled with accounts of the renewed
warfare. Even the English histories frequently mention the
incursions of the Welsh, till, at last, united to England,
they seem to be incorporated with the natives of their
ancient soil.
{179}
The conquer'd nation--fell a dear bought prey,
And Britain's island, _Saxon_ Lords obey:
The shouting troops their victories proclaim,
And load their chiefs with royalty and fame:
The garland of their triumphs was their crown,
Mob set them up, and rabble pull'd them down!
Fighting was all the merit they could bring,
The bloodiest wretch appear'd the bravest King!
Nor did his kingship any longer last,
Than till by some more powerful rogue displaced.
In spoil and blood was fix'd the right divine.
And thus commenced the royal Saxon line:--
That sword that vanquish'd innocence in fight,
The sword that crush'd the banish'd Britons' right,
At pleasure subdivides the British crown,
And forms eight soldier kingdoms out of one.
From these we strive to date our royal line,
And these must help us to a right divine;
From actions buried in eternal night,
Priestcraft is brought, to fix the fancied right;
Priestcraft that, always on the strongest side,
Contrives, tho' kings should walk, that priests shall ride.
One master thief his fellows dispossest,
And gave, once more, the weeping nation rest;
For Egbert, * English monarchy began,
By his Almighty-sword--the Sacred man!
* Egbert came over originally from France, and was not the
successor of any prince of the West Saxon kingdom, nor of
any kingdom.
{180}
Yet who was Egbert? Search his ancient breed;
What sacred ancestors did he succeed?
What mighty princes form'd his royal line,
And handed down to him the right divine?
A high-Dutch trooper, sent abroad to fight,
Whose trade was blood, and in his arm his right:
A supernumerary Holsteineer, *
For want of room at home, sent out to war;
A mere Swiss** mercenary, who for bread,
Was born on purpose to be knock'd in head;
A Saxon soldier was his high descent,
Murder his business, plunder his intent;
The poor unvalued, despicable thing,
A thief by nation, and by fate a king!
* The Saxons that came over were from Jutland, Holstein, &c.
The poor countries the Saxons lived in, being unable to
support the vast numbers of the people they produced, they
sought subsistence and habitations in fruitful and plentiful
lands.
** A Swiss, alludes to their being mercenaries.
To-day the monarch glories in his crown,
A soldier thief to-morrow knocks him down,
And calls the fancied right divine his own!
In the next age that 'rightful' Lord's forgot,
And rampant treason triumphs on the spot:
Success gives title, makes possession just,
For if the fates obey, the subjects must.
We should be last of all that should pretend,
The long descent of princes to defend;
Since, if hereditary right's the claim,
The English line has forty times been lame;
Of all the nations in the world, there's none
Have less of true succession in their crown.
{181}
Britannia now, with men of blood opprest,
And all her race of tyrants lately ceased;
Ill fate prevailing, seeks at foreign shores,
And for worse monsters, ignorantly implores.
The right divine was so despised a thing,
The crown went out a begging for a king
Of foreign breed, of unrelated race,
Whore in his scutcheon, tyrant in his face j
Of spurious birth, and intermingled blood,
Who nor our laws nor language understood.
William the early summons soon obeys,
Ambition fills his sails, his fleets the seas;
By cruel hopes, and fatal valour sped,
The foreign legions Britain's shores o'erspread:
The sword decides the claim, the land's the prey,
Fated the conquering tyrant to obey.
Harold by usurpation gain'd the crown, *
And ditto usurpation pull'd him down.
Nothing but patience then could Britain claim;
Oppress'd by suff'ring, suff'ring made her tame:
She saw the tyrant William quit the throne,
And hoped for better usage from his son;
But change of tyrants gave her small relief,
She lost the lion, and receiv'd the thief.
* Harold seized upon the crown by force. He had no claim to
it, by blood or inheritance, being the son of Earl Goodwin.
Rufus, his father's ill got treasure seized,
The greedy sons of mother-church appeased;
Bought up rebellion with the cash he stole,
Secured the Clergy, and seduced the whole.
So brib'ry first with robbery combined
To ride before, and treason rode behind.
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Ambition, and the lust of rule prevail'd,
And Robert's right, on Rufus' head entail'd. *
Beau-Clerk next grasp'd his elder brother's crown,
And, by his sword, maintain'd it was his own:
The second ** Henry fights, and fighting treats,
To own the prince's title he defeats;
Consents to mean conclusions of the war,
And stoops to be a base usurper's heir;
Accepts the ignominious grant, and shows
His right's as bad as Stephen's that bestows:
The royal tricksters thus divide the prey,
And helpless crowds the jugglers' swords obey. ***
Then John, **** another branch of Henry's line,
Jumps on the throne, in spite of Right Divine,
Turn we to mighty Edward's deathless name;
Or to his son's, whose conquests were the same;
That mighty hero of right royal race,
His father still alive, usurp'd his place. (v)
* They were both usurpers, for the true right of descent was
in Edgar Atheling. of the race of Edmund Ironside.
** Henry II. was obliged to compromise the dispute with his
competitor Stephen; a prudent agreement, but in defiance of
hereditary right.
*** As at the death of Henry I. the main line of Normandy
ended, so the succession has ever since proved so brittle,
that it never held to the third heir in a right descent
without being put by, or receiving some alteration by
usurpation, or extinction of the male blood.--Churchill's
Divi Britannici, p. 207.
**** King John was the youngest son of Henry II., who had
his eldest line deposed. Henry was the son of a usurper, a
usurper himself, and the murderer of his own brother's son.
(v) Edward III. reigned, his father, Edward II. being a
prisoner, and was afterwards murdered.
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As Edward on his parent's murder stood,
So Richard's tyrant reign was closed in blood:
Deposed and murder'd, Edward's father lies;
Deposed and murder'd--thus the grandson * dies.
Lancastrian Henry from his feeble head,
The bauble wrench'd, and wore it in his stead;
Three of his name by due succession reign,
And York demands the right of line in vain.
Thro' seas of slaughter, for this carnaged crown
Edward, not went, but waded to the throne **
Three times deposed, three times restored by force,
Priest-ridden Henry's title*** yields of course.
Short lived the right the conquering king enjoy'd,
Treason and crime his new-crown'd race destroy'd;
As if the crimson hand of Power pursued
The very crown, and fated it to blood,
Richard by lust of government allured,
By double murders, next that crown procured;
For silent records trumpet-tongued proclaim
The jails and graves of princes are the same.
At Bosworth field, the crookback was dethroned;
Slain in the fight, and then the victor own'd! ****
* Richard II.
** Edward IV.
*** Henry VI.
**** Richard III. was succeeded by Henry VII. who had
clearly no claim to the crown from blood. After him it still
devolved with irregularity, although uuder the Tudors, the
doctrine of hereditary right was as vaguely maintained as
before. Thus, a Parliament granted to Henry VIII. the power
of regulating the succession by will, and it was by
pretending to exercise a similar power under an alleged will
of Edward VI. that the unprincipled Northumberland sought
the establishment of Lady Jane Grey. Elizabeth, on the same
ground, was importuned to appoint a suc-cessor, at
intervals, during the last twenty years of her reign; and
finally, named the King of Scotland in her last moments.
These are strange incidents for the advocates of Divine
Right! The fact is, this wretched theory was never formally
advocated until the days of James I.; and it may be
considered to be one of the precions fruits of that settled
connexion between Church and State, of which the Despot,
Henry VIII., laid the foun-dation. Yet no Despot ever
supported himself steadily on an English throne; and what is
there to prove, that such men ever can? Look at King
Richard II., he was a finished gentle-man, possessed some
taste for literature, and shewed himself as. fond of finery
as need be; but he waged war with the common sense of the
realm and the rights of the people,--and finally, by
entrusting his power to weak, inefficient, and corrupt
ministers, roused the anger of a distressed and overtaxed
community. Moral--They were beheaded, and he was dethroned.
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So men of blood, incited by its taste,
By lust of rule urged on, laid England waste;
Oppression then upon oppression grew,
One royal wretch another overthrew;
They made a football of the People's crown,
And brother-tyrant brother-king pull'd down,
Succeeding robberies revenged the past,
And every age of crime outdid the last.
Look on once more--the tangled line survey,
By which kings claim to bind men to obey.
In the right line they say their title lies:
But if its twisted?--then the title dies.
Look at it!--knotted, spliced in every place!
Closely survey the intersected race--
So full of violations, such a brood.
Of false successions, spurious births, and blood;
Such perjuries, such frauds, to mount a throne,
That Kings might blush their ancestors to own!
{185}
Oh! but Possession supersedes the Line!
Indeed!--then king, as king, has Right Divine;
And, coy Succession fled from majesty,
Makes Usurpation as divine as he;
_De Facto is de Jure_, and a throne,
To every dog that steals it is his bone!
Hence tyrants--and from these infected springs,
Flows the best title of _the Best of Kings!_ *
* The Best of Kings (Court slang) the King for the time
being.--Many a king has been the worst man of his age, but
no king was ever the best. In 1683, the very year of Charles
the Second's reign, in which Lord William Russel and
Algernon Sydney were murdered under the forms of law, by
packed juries, and the king's passive obedient judges--when
the throne floated in blood, and the king's manners were
notoriously and disgust-ingly sensual and dissolute--in that
year, J. Shnrley, M. A. in his 'Ecclesiastical History
Epitomised,' gives Charles the title of "the best of kings!"
calls his life and reign virtuous! and prays that his days
may be as the days of Heaven!--This loyal author calls
himself, The Christian reader's "beloved Brother in Christ!"
Of the same king, Charles II., Horace Walpole (Lord Orford)
gives this character in his Epistle from Florence:--
(Dodsley's Collection, vol. iii. p. 92.)
Fortune, or fair, or frowning, on his soul
Could stamp no virtue, and no vice controul!
Honour or morals, gratitude or truth,
Nor taught his ripen'd age, nor knew his youth!
The care of nations left to whores or chance,
Plund'rer of Britain, pensioner of France;
Free to buffoons, to ministers denied,
He lived an atheist, and a bigot died!
All kings have parasites and praise; the Press records their
actions; and Posterity gives their characters.
{086}
_Right of Succession_, or what other claim
Of right to rule, by whatsoever name
Or title call'd, by whomsoever urged,
Is in the people's right of choosing merged.
The right's the People's, and the People's choice
Binds kings in duty to obey their voice;
The Public Will, the only Right Divine,
Sanctions the office, or divides the line;
Topples the crown from off the tyrant's head,
And puts a king to govern in his stead.
Tyrant and king are vastly different things--
We're robb'd by tyrants, but obey'd by kings!
If it be ask'd, how the distinction's known,
Oppression marks him out--the nations groan,
The broken laws, the cries of injur'd blood,
Are languages by all men understood! *
* Tyrants lose all respect for humanity, in proportion as
they are sunk beneath it; taught to believe themselves of
a different species, they really become so; lose their
participation with their kind; and, in mimicking the God,
dwindle into the brute! Blind with prejudices as a mole,
stung with truth as with scorpions, sore all over with
wounded pride like a boil, their minds a heap of morbid
proud flesh and bloated humours, a disease and gan-grene in
the state, instead of its life-blood and vital principle--
foreign despots claim mankind as their property. They regard
men crawling on the face of the earth as we do insects that
cross our path, and survey the common drama of human life as
a fantoccini exhibition got up for tlieir amusement. It is
the over-weening, aggravated, intolerable sense of swelling
pride and ungovernable self-will that so often drives them
mad; as it is their blind fatuity and insensibility to all
beyond themselves, that, transmitted through successive
generations, and confirmed by regal intermarriages, in time
makes them idiots.
Hazlitt's Political Essays, p. 341.
{087}
Just laws and liberty make patriot kings;
Tyrants and tyranny are self-made things. *
* Though a Despot be transformed into a limited king, he is
in heart and purpose still a despot. He feels duress; he is
not at liberty to oppress at his pleasare; and he awaits an
opportnnity to exercise 'the Right Divine of Kings to govern
wrong;' for he holds the doctrine that "oaths are not to be
kept with subjects." In the reign of Richard II. the Duke of
Norfolk apprised the Duke of Hereford, that the King
purposed their destruction:--
Hereford.--God forbid!--He has sworn by St. Edward, to be a
good Lord to me and the others.
Norfolk.-- So has he often sworn to me by God's Body: but I
do not trust him the more for that!
Every restored despot has become an unblushing and shameless
perjurer; where is there in history an instance to the con-
trary?--Once a Despot, and always a Despot.
Alfred the Great is the only King in our annals who being
guilty of misgovernment, and seeing its evils had the high
courage to acknowledge his crime by amendment. At the
commencement of his reign he seemed to consider his exalted
dignity as an emancipation from restraint, and to have found
leisure, even amidst his struggles with the Danes, to
indulge the irapetuosity of his passions. His immorality and
despotism provoked the censure of the virtuous; he was
haughty to his subjects, neglected the administration of
justice, and treated with contempt the complaints of the
indigent and oppressed. In the eighth year of his reign he
was driven from the throne by the Danes. Narrowly escaping
death and enduring many hardships, adversity brought
reflection. According to the piety of the age, instead of
tracing events to their political sources, he referred them
immediately to the providence of God; and considered his
misfortunes as the instrument with which Divine Justice
punished his past enormities. By his prudence and valour he
regaiued the throne, and drew np a code of laws by which he
ordained the governmeat should be administered. Magistrates
trembled at his stern impartiality and inflexibility. He
executed forty-four judges in one year for their informal
and iniquitous proceedings. Hence their survivors and
successors were careful to acquire a competent degree of
knowledge, and their decisions became accordant to the law.
Discovering that the only real foundation of national
happiness is in the enlightenment of the people, he
instructed them himself by his writings, endowed
establishments for the promotion of Education, and became
the guardian and benefactor of his country.*--His virtues
were the fruit of early instruction. When he was a child,
his mother, Osburga, awakened in him a passion for learning
aud knowledge. Holding in her hand a Saxon poem, elegantly
written and beautifully illnminated, she offered it as a
reward to the first of her children whose proficiency should
enable him to read it to her. The emulation of Alfred was
excited: he ran to his master, applied to the task with
diligence, performed it to the satisfaction of the queen,
and received the prize of his industry. His mind thus opened
by this excellent woman, she dropped in the seeds of
knowledge; by careful culture they grew into wisdom, and
Alfred is one of the most illustrious instances of the
endless blessings conferred upon man by Education.
From the banks of the strong hold of Corfe Castle, in
Dorsetshire, near Wareham, formerly a station of the Danish
barbariaus, one of their successors making good his lodgment
in a nameless House denies the justice of Universal
Education, forgetful, perhaps, that the benighted savages,
his predecessors, were finally expelled by Alfred; that it
was the triumph of Knowledge and Liberty over Ignorance and
Selfish power; and that Alfred, disdaining to use the
advantage whick Education gave him over the rest of the
people, othirwise than for their welfare, incessuntly
laboured to dispense its benefits to All.
* _Lingard's History of England, vol. i. c. 4._
{188}
As government was ever understood
To be a measure for the people's good;
So when perverted to a wrong intent,
It's stark oppression, not a government.
{189}
Blest are the days, and wing'd with joy they fly,
When kings protect the people's liberty;
When settled peace in stated order reigns,
And, nor the nation, nor the king complains;
If kings may ravish, plunder, and destroy,
Oppress the world, and all its wealth enjoy;
May harass nations, with their breath may kill,
And limit liberty by royal will;
Then was the world for ignorance design'd,
And God gave kings to blast the human mind;
And Kings but general farmers of the land;
And men their stock for slaughter at command;
Mere beasts of draught, to crouch and be opprest,
Whom G
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