Corruption and Intolerance;

TWO POEMS.

PREFACE.

THE practice which has lately been introduced into literature, of writing very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me rather a happy invention; for it supplies us with a mode of turning stupid poetry to account; and as horses too dull for the saddle may serve well enough to draw lumber, so poems of this kind make excellent beasts of burden, and will bear notes, though they may not bear reading. Besides, the comments in such cases are so little under the necessity of paying any servile deference to the text, that they may even adopt that Socratic dogma, « Quod supra nos nihil ad nos.»>

cities like the myrtle over a certain statue in Miner-
va's temple at Athens, it skilfully veiled from their sight
the only obtrusive feature of royalty. At the same
time, however, that the Revolution abridged this unpo-
pular attribute, it amply compensated by the substitu-
tion of a new power, as much more potent in its effect
as it is more secret in its operations. In the disposal of
an immense revenue, and the extensive patronage an-
nexed to it, the first foundations of this power of the
Crown were laid; the innovation of a standing army at
once increased and strengthened it, and the few slight
barriers which the Act of Settlement opposed to its pro-
gress have all been gradually removed during the whig-
gish reigns that succeeded, till at length this spirit of
influence is become the vital principle of the state, whose
subtle and unseen, pervades every part of the
agency,
constitution, lurks under all its forms, and regulates all
its movements; and, like the invsible sylph or grace
which presides over the motions of beauty,

. Illam, quirquid agit, quoquo vestigia flectit,
Componit furtim subsequiturque,

ally associated by Englishmen, that, probably, in objecting to the latter I may be thought hostile or indifferent to the former; but nothing can be more unjust than such a suspicion;-the very object which my humble animadversions would attain is, that in the crisis to which I think England is hastening, and between which and foreign subjugation she may soon be compelled to chuse, the errors and omissions of 1688 may be remedied, and that, as she then had a Revolution with out a Reform, she may now seek a Reform without a Revolution.

In the first of the following poems, I have ventured to speak of the Revolution in language which has sometimes been employed by Tory writers, and which is therefore neither very new nor popular. But, however an Englishman may be reproached with ingratitude, for appreciating the merits and results of a measure which he is taught to regard as the source of his liber-The cause of liberty and the Revolution are so habituties - however ungrateful it might be in Alderman Birch to question for a moment the purity of that glorious era to which he is indebted for the seasoning of so many orations-yet an Irishman, who has none of these obligations to acknowledge, to whose country the Revolution brought nothing but injury and insult, and who recollects that the book of Molyneux was burned, by order of William's Whig Parliament, for daring to extend to unfortunate Ireland those principles on which the Revolution was professedly founded-an Irishman may venture to criticise the measures of that period, without exposing himself either to the imputation of ingratitude, or the suspicion of being influenced by any popish remains of jacobitism. No nation, it is true, was ever blessed with a more golden opportunity of establishing and securing its liberties for ever than the conjuncture of Eighty-eight presented to the people of Great Britain. But the disgraceful reigns of Charles and James had weakened and degraded the national character. The bold notions of popular right, which had arisen out of the struggles between Charles the First and his Parliament, were gradually supplanted by those slavish doctrines for which Lord H-kesb-ry eulogizes the churchmen of that period; and as the Reformation had happened too soon for the purity of religion, so the Revolution came too late for the spirit of liberty. Its advantages accordingly were for the most part specious and transitory, while the evils which it entailed are still felt and still increasing. By rendering unnecessary the frequent exercise of prerogative, that unwieldy power which cannot move a step without alarm, it limited the only interference of the Crown which is singly and independently exposed before the people, and whose abuses are therefore obvious to their senses and capa

In speaking of the parties which have so long agitated England, it will be observed that I lean as little to the Whigs as to their adversaries. Both factions have been equally cruel to Ireland, and perhaps equally insincere in their efforts for the liberties of England. There is one name, indeed, connected with whiggism, of which I can never think but with veneration and tenderness. As justly, however, might the light of the sun be claimed by any particular nation, as the sanction of that name be assumed by any party whatever: Mr Fox belonged to mankind, and they have lost in him their ablest friend.

With respect to the few lines upon Intolerance, which I have subjoined, they are but the imperfect beginning of a long series of Essays, with which I here meuace my readers, upon the same important subject. I shall look to no higher merit in the task, than that of giving a new form to claims and remonstrances, which have often been much more eloquently urged, and which would long ere now have produced their effect, but that the minds of some men, like the pupil of the eye, contract themselves the more, the stronger light there is shed upon them.

CORRUPTION,

AN EPISTLE.

Νυν δ' ἀπανθ' ώσπερ εξ αγοράς εκπέπραται ταῦτα· αντεισήκται δε αντί τούτων, ὑφ' ὧν απολωλε και νενοσηκεν ἡ ̔Ελλας. Ταυτα δ' εςι τις ζήλος, ει τις εἴληφε τι· γελως αν ὁμολογη· συγγνώμη τοις ελεγχομενοις μισος, αν τούτοις τις επιτιμα· ταλλα, παντα, όσα εκ του δωροδοκειν ηρτηται.

DEMOSTH. Philipp, 111.

BOAST on, my friend-though, stript of all beside,
Thy struggling nation still retains her pride:1
That pride which once in genuine glory woke,
When Marlborough fought, and brilliant St John spoke
That pride which still, by time and shame unstung,
Outlives e'en Wh*tel'cke's sword and H*wksb'ry's tongue!
Boast on, my friend, while in this humbled isle, 2
Where honour mourns and freedom fears to smile,
Where the bright light of England's fame is known
But by the baleful shadow she has thrown

Yet pause a moment-and if truths severe
Can find an inlet to that courtly ear
Which loves no politics in rhyme but P―e's,
And hears no news but W-rd's gazetted lies;
If aught can please thee but the good old saws
Of « Church and State,» and « William's matchless
laws,»
And « Acts and Rights of glorious Eighty-eight,»-
Things, which though now a century out of date,
Still serve to ballast, with convenient words,
A few crank arguments for speeching Lords1
Turn, while I tell how England's freedom found,
Where most she looked for life, her deadliest wound;
How brave she struggled, while her foe was seen,
How faint since Influence lent that foe a screen;
How strong o'er James and Popery she prevail'd,
How weakly fell, when Whigs and gold assail'd.

It never seems to occur to those orators and addressers who round

off so many sentences and paragraphs with the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, etc., that all the provisions which these Acts contained for the preservation of parliamentary independence have been long

The Revolution, as its

laid aside as romantic and troublesome.
greatest admirers acknowledge, was little more than a recognition of
ancient privileges, a restoration of that old Gothic structure which was
brought from the woods of Germany into England. Edward the First
had long before made a similar recognition, and bad even more ex-

On all our fate3-where, doom'd to wrongs and slights, pressly reverted to the first principles of the constitution, by declaring

We hear you talk of Britain's glorious rights,
As weeping slaves, that under hatches lie,
Hear those on deck extol the sun and sky!

Boast on, while wandering through my native haunts,
I coldly listen to thy patriot vaunts,
And feel, though close our wedded countries twine,
More sorrow for my own than pride from thine.

Angli suos ae sua omnia impense mirantur: cæteras nationcs de-
spectui habent.-BARCLAY (as quoted in one of Dryden's prefaces).
England began very early to feel the effects of cruelty towards
her dependencies.
The severity of her Government (says Macpher-
son) contributed more to deprive her of the continental deminions of
the family of Plantagenet than the arms of France..-See his His-
tory, vol. i. page 111.

5. By the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland, in 1691 (sve

as

that the people should have their laws, liberties, and free customs,
largely and wholly as they have used to have the same at any time
they had them.. But, luckily for the Crown and its interests, the
concessions both of Edward and of William have been equally regus
The feudal system was
and verbal, equally theoretical aud insincere.
continued, notwithstanding the former, and Lord M's bonest head
is upon his shoulders, in spite of the latter. So that I confess I never
meet with a politician who seriously quotes the Declaration of Rights,
etc. to prove the actual existence of English liberty, that I do not
think of the Marquis, whom Montesquieu mentions, (a) who set about
looking for mines in the Pyrenees, upon the strength of authorities
which he had read in some ancient authors. The poor Marquis toiled
and searched in vain. He quoted his authorities to the last, but be
found no taines after all.

* The chief, perhaps the only, advantage which has resulted from
the system of influence, is the tranquil, uninterrupted flow which it
If Kings must be
has given to the administration of Government.
paramount in the State (aud their Ministers at least seem to think so),
the country is indebted to the Revolution for enabling them to be-
come so quietly, and for removing so skilfully the danger of those
shocks and colhsiens which the alarming efforts of prerogative Bever
failed to produce.

It is the nature of a people in general to attend but to the externals of Government. Having neither leisure nor ability to discuss its measures, they look no deeper than the surface for their utility, and no farther than the present for their consequences. Mrs Macaulay has at this time were, as the people said of a certain period, The people

Burke), the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure too of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished. The new English interest was settled with as solid a stability as any thing in human affairs can look for. All the penal laws of that unparalleled code of oppression, which were made after the last event, were manifestly the effects of national hatred and acorn towards a conquered people, whom the victors delighted to trample upon, and were not at all afraid to provoke. Yet this is the era to which the wise Common Council of Dublin refer us for invaluable blessings, etc. And this of Great Britain always are, half-stupid, hali-drunk, and half-asleep. is the era which such Governors as his Grace the Duke of R-clm-nd and however we may dissent from this petulant effusion of a Scotchthink it politic to commemorate, in the eyes of my insulted countrywoman, it must be owned that the reasoning powers of John Bull are men, by an annual procession round the statue of King William! not very easily called into action, and that even where he does condeAn uncarving trait of the policy of Great Britain towards Ireland has been her selection of such men to govern us as were least likely to scend to exert them, it is like Dogberry's display of his reading and writing, where there is no need of such vanity; as upon that deep deviate into justice and liberality, and the alarm which she has taken when any conscientious Viceroy has shown symptoms of departure question about the dangers of the church, which was submitted for his discussion by Mr P-re-s-1 at the late elections. It follows, boafrom the old code of prejudice and oppression. Our most favourite ever, from this apathy of the people, that as long as no glaring exer Governors have accordingly been our shortest visitors, and the first tion of power, no open violation of forms is obtruded upon them, À moments of their popularity have in general been the last of their is of very little consequence how matters are managed bebind the cur Government. Thus Sir Anthony Bellingham, after the death of Henry the Eighth, was recalled for not sufficiently consulting the English tain; and a few quiet men, getting close to the car of the Throat, interests, or, in other words, for not shooting the requisite quantity of wild Irish. The same kind of delinquency led to the recal of Sir John Perrot, in Elizabeth's time, and to that of the Earl of Radnor, in the reign of Charles the Second, of whom Lord Orford says, We are not told how he disappointed the King's expectations, probably not by too great complaisance, nor why his administration, which Burnet calls just, was disliked. If it is true that he was a good governor, the presumption will be that his role was not disliked by those to whom but from whom he was sent.-Royal and Noble Authors. We are

ewn times,

not without instances of the same illiberal policy in our

may whisper away the salvation of the country so inaudibly, that reis
will be divested of half its alarming preparatives. If, in addition to
this slumber of the people, a great majority of those whom they have
deputed to watch for them, can be induced, by any irresistible argu-
ment, to prefer the safety of the government to the integrity of the
at the cacroachments of
constitution, and to think a
power less troublesome than the diftulties which would follow reform,
I cannot imagine a more tranquil state of affairs than must necessa-
rily result from such general and well-regulated acquiescence. Instead

connivance

(a) Liv. x. chap. 11.

While Kings were poor, and all those schemes unknown
Which drain the People, but enrich the Throne;
Ere yet a yielding Commons had supplied

Those chains of gold by which themselves are tied;
Then proud Prerogative, untaught to creep
With Bribery's silent foot on Freedom's sleep,'
Frankly avow'd his bold enslaving plan,

And claim'd a right from God to trample man!
But Luther's light had too much warm'd mankind
For Hampden's truths to linger long behind;
Nor then, when king-like Popes had fallen so low,
Could pope-like Kings' escape the levelling blow.
That ponderous sceptre (in whose place we bow
To the light talisman of influence now),
Too gross, too visible to work the spell
Which Modern Power performs, in fragments fell:
In fragments lay, till, patch'd and painted o'er
With fleurs-de-lys, it shone and scourged once more!
T was then, my friend, thy kneeling nation quaff d
Long, long and deep, the churchman's opiate draught
Of tame obedience-till her sense of right
And pulse of glory seem'd extinguish'd quite,
And Britons slept so sluggish in their chain,
That wakening Freedom call'd almost in vain!
Oh England! England! what a chance was thine,
When the last tyrant of that ill-starr'd line
Fled from his sullied crown, and left thee free
To found thy own eternal liberty!

of vain and agitating efforts to establish that speculative balance of the constitution, which perhaps has never existed but in the pages of Montesquieu (a) and de Lolme, a preponderance would be silently yielded to one of the three estates, which would carry the other two almost insensibly, but effectually, along with it; and even though the path might lead eventually to destruction, yet its specious and gilded smoothness would almost atone for the danger-like Milton's bridge over Chaos, it would lead

Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to ****.

How bright, how glorious in that sun-shine hour,
Might patriot hands have raised the triple tower'
Of British freedom on a rock divine,
Which neither force could storm nor treachery mine!
But no-the luminous, the lofty plan,

Like mighty Babel, seem'd too bold for man;
The curse of jarring tongues again was given
To thwart a work which raised men near to Heaven!
While Tories marr'd what Whigs had scarce begun,'
While Whigs undid what Whigs themselves had done,3

Tacitus bas expressed his opinion, in a passage very frequently quoted, that such a distribution of power as the theory of the British constitution exhibits is merely a subject of bright speculation, system more easily praised than practised, and which, even could it happen to exist, would certainly not prove permanent ; and, in truth, if we reflect on the English history, we shall feel very much inclined to agree with Tacitus. We shall find that at no period whatever has this balance of the three estates existed; that the nobles predominated till the policy of Henry VII. and his successor reduced their weight by breaking up the feudal system of property; that the power of the Crown became then supreme and absolute, till the bold encroachments of the Commons subverted the fabric altogether; that the alternate ascendancy of prerogative and privilege distracted the period which followed the Restoration; and that, lastly, the Acts of 1688, by laying the foundation of an unbounded court influence, have secured a preponderance to the Throne which every succeeding year increases. So that the British constitution has never perhaps existed but in theory. 3. Those two thieves ́(says Ralph) between whom the nation was crucified..-Use and Abuse of Parliaments, page 164.

3 The monarchs of Great Britain can never be sufficiently grateful for that generous spirit which led the Revolutionary Whigs to give away the Crown, without imposing any of those restraints or stipulations which other men migh: have taken advantage of such a moment to enforce, and in framing of which they had so good a model to follow as the limitations proposed by the Lords Essex and Halifax, in the debate upon the Exclusion Bill. They not only condescended, however, to accept of places, but they took care that these dignities should be no impediment to their voice potential in affairs of legislation; and though an Act was after many years suffered to pass, which by one of its articles disqualified placemen from serving as members of the House of Commons, yet it was not allowed to interfere with the influence of the reigning monarch, nor indeed with that of his successor Anne, as the purifying clause was not to take effect till after the decease of the latter sovereign, and she very considerately repealed it altogether. So that, as representation has continued ever since, if the King were simple enough to send to foreign courts am

Though the Kings of England were most unroyally harassed and fettered in all their pursuits by pecuniary difficulties, before the provident enactments of William's reign had opened to the Crown its pre-hassadors who were most of them in the pay of those courts, he would sent sources of wealth, yet we must not attribute to the Revolutionary Whigs the credit altogether of inventing this art of government. Its advantages had long been understood by ministers and favourites, though the limits of the royal revenue prevented them from exercising it with effect. In the reign of Mary, indeed, the gold of Spain, being added to the usual resources of the Throne, produced such a spirit of ductility in ber Parliaments, that the price for which each member had sold himself was publicly ascertained: and if Charles the First could have commanded a similar supply, it is not too much to suppose that The Commonwealth never would have existed But it was during the reign of the second Charles that the nearest approaches were made to that pecuniary system which our debt, our funds, and our taxes, have since brought to such perfection; and Clifford and Danby would not disgrace even the present times of political venality. Still, however, the experiment was but partial and imperfect, (b) and attended with scarcely any other advantage than that of suggesting the uses to which the power of the purse has been since converted, just as the fulminat ing dust of the chemists may have prepared the way for the invention of gunpowder.

be just as faithfully represented as his people. It would be endless to enumerate all the favours which were conferred upon William by those apostate Whigs. They complimented him with the first suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act which had been hazarded since the confirmation of that privilege; and this example of our Deliverer's reign has not been lost upon any of his successors. They promoted the establishment of a standing army, and circulated in its defence the celebrated Balancing Letter, in which it is insinuated that England, even then, in her boasted hour of regeneration, was arrived at such a pitch of faction and corruption, that nothing could keep her in order but a Whig ministry and a standing army. They refused, as long as they could, to shorten the duration of Parliaments; and, though the declaration of rights acknowledged the necessity of such a reform, they were able, by arts not unknown to modern ministers, to brand those as traitors and republicans who urged it. (a) But the grand and distinguishing trait of their measures was the power which they gave to the Crown of annihilating the freedom of elections, of muddying for ever that stream of representation, which had, even in the most agitated times, reflected some features of the people, but which then. 2 The drivelling correspondence between James I. and his dog for the first time, became the Pactolus of the Court, and grew so darkSteenie (the Duke of Buckingham), which we find among the Hardened with sands of gold, that it served for the people's mirror no wicke Papers, sufficiently shows, if we wanted such illustration, into what doting, idiotic brains the plan of arbitrary power may enter.

longer. We need but consult the writings of that time, to understand the astonishment then excited by measures, which the practice of a century has rendered not only familiar but necessary. See a pam(a) Montesquieu seems not a little satisfied with his own ingenuity in phlet called The Danger of mercenary Parliaments, 16c8; State Ending out the character of the English from the nature of their poli- Tracts, Will. III. vol. ii. p. 638; and see also Some Para foxes pretical institutions; but it appears to me somewhat like that easy saga-sented as a New Year's Gift (State Poems, vol. iii. p. 327). city by which Lavater has discovered the genius of Shakspeare in his features.

(6) See Preface to a collection of Debates, etc. in 160 and 1695, for an account of the public tables kept at Westminster, in Charles the Seconf's time, to feed the betrayers of their country. The payment of each day's work was left under their respective plates.

(a) See a Pamphlet, published in 1693, upon the King's refusing to sign the Triennial Bill, called A Discourse between a Yeoman of Kent and a Knight of a Shire - Hereupon (says the Yeoman) the gentleman grew angry, and said that I talked like a less common

wealth man..