CORRUPTION,

Boast on, my friend — tho’ stript of all beside,

Thy struggling nation still retains her pride:

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 even Whitelocke's sword and Hawkesbury's tongue!

Boast on, my friend, while in this humbled isle

Where Honor mourns and Freedom fears to smile,

Where the bright light of England's fame is known

But by the shadow o'er our fortunes thrown;

Where, doomed ourselves to naught but wrongs and slights,

We hear you boast of Britain's glorious rights,

As wretched slaves that under hatches lie

Hear those on deck extol the sun and sky!

Boast on, while wandering thro’ my native haunts,

I coldly listen to thy patriot vaunts;

And feel, tho’ close our wedded countries twine,

More sorrow for my own than pride from thine.

Yet pause a moment — and if truths severe

Can find an inlet to that courtly ear,

Which hears no news but Ward's gazetted lies,

And loves no politics in rhyme but Pye's,—

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Things which tho’ now a century out of date

Still serve to ballast with convenient words,

A few crank arguments for speeching lords,—

Turn while I tell how England's freedom found,

Where most she lookt 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 prevailed,

How weakly fell when Whigs and gold assailed.

While kings were poor and all those schemes unknown

Which drain the people to 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 avowed his bold enslaving plan

And claimed a right from God to trample man!

But Luther's schism had too much roused 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, patched and painted o'er

With fleurs-de-lis, it shone and scourged once more.

‘ Twas then, my friend, thy kneeling nation quaft

Long, long and deep, the churchman's opiate draught

Of passive, prone obedience — then took flight

All sense of man's true dignity and right;

And Britons slept so sluggish in their chain

That Freedom's watch-voice called almost in vain.

Oh England! England! what a chance was thine,

When the last tyrant of that ill-starred line

Fled from his sullied crown and left thee free

To found thy own eternal liberty!

How nobly high in that propitious 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, seemed too bold for man;

The curse of jarring tongues again was given

To thwart a work which raised men nearer heaven.

While Tories marred what Whigs had scarce begun,

While Whigs undid what Whigs themselves had done.

The hour was lost and William with a smile

Saw Freedom weeping o'er the unfinisht pile!

Hence all the ills you suffer,— hence remain

Such galling fragments of that feudal chain

Whose links, around you by the Norman flung,

Tho’ loosed and broke so often, still have clung.

Hence sly Prerogative like Jove of old

Has turned his thunder into showers of gold,

Whose silent courtship wins securer joys,

Taints by degrees, and ruins without noise.

While parliaments, no more those sacred things

Which make and rule the destiny of kings.

Like loaded dice by ministers are thrown,

And each new set of sharpers cog their own.

Hence the rich oil that from the Treasury steals

Drips smooth o'er all the Constitution's wheels,

Giving the old machine such pliant play

That Court and Commons jog one joltless way,

While Wisdom trembles for the crazy car,

So gilt, so rotten, carrying fools so far;

And the duped people, hourly doomed to pay

The sums that bribe their liberties away,—

Like a young eagle who has lent his plume

To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom,—

See their own feathers pluckt, to wing the dart

Which rank corruption destines for their heart!

But soft! methinks I hear thee proudly say,

“What! shall I listen to the impious lay

“That dares with Tory license to profane

“The bright bequests of William's glorious reign?

“Shall the great wisdom of our patriot sires,

“Whom Hawkesbury quotes and savory Birch admires,

“Be slandered thus? shall honest Steele agree

“With virtuous Rose to call us pure and free,

“Yet fail to prove it? Shall our patent pair

“Of wise state-poets waste their words in air,

“And Pye unheeded breathe his prosperous strain,

“And Canning take the people's sense in vain?”

The people!— ah! that Freedom's form should stay

Where Freedom's spirit long hath past away!

That a false smile should play around the dead

And flush the features when the soul hath fled!

When Rome had lost her virtue with her rights,

When her foul tyrant sat on Capreae's heights,

Amid his ruffian spies and doomed to death

Each noble name they blasted with their breath,—

Even then, ( in mockery of that golden time,

When the Republic rose revered, sublime,

And her proud sons, diffused from zone to zone,

Gave kings to every nation but their own,)

Even then the senate and the tribunes stood,

Insulting marks, to show how high the flood

Of Freedom flowed, in glory's bygone day,

And how it ebbed,— for ever ebbed away!

Look but around — tho’ yet a tyrant's sword

Nor haunts our sleep nor glitters o'er our board,

Tho’ blood be better drawn, by modern quacks,

With Treasury leeches than with sword or axe;

Yet say, could even a prostrate tribune's power

Or a mock senate in Rome's servile hour

Insult so much the claims, the rights of man,

As doth that fettered mob, that free divan,

Of noble tools and honorable knaves,

Of pensioned patriots and privileged slaves;—

That party-colored mass which naught can warm

But rank corruption's heat — whose quickened swarm

Spread their light wings in Bribery's golden sky,

Buzz for a period, lay their eggs and die;—

That greedy vampire which from Freedom's tomb

Comes forth with all the mimicry of bloom

Upon its lifeless cheek and sucks and drains

A people's blood to feel its putrid veins!

Thou start'st, my friend, at picture drawn so dark —

“Is there no light?” — thou ask'st — “no lingering spark

“Of ancient fire to warm us? Lives there none,

“To act a Marvell's part? " — alas! not one.

To place and power all public spirit tends,

In place and power all public spirit ends;

Like hardy plants that love the air and sky,

When out,‘ twill thrive — but taken in,‘ twill die!

Not bolder truths of sacred Freedom hung

From Sidney's pen or burned on Fox's tongue,

Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night,

While yet their conscience, as their purse, is light;

While debts at home excite their care for those

Which, dire to tell, their much-loved country owes,

And loud and upright, till their prize be known,

They thwart the King's supplies to raise their own.

But bees on flowers alighting cease their hum —

So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb.

And, tho’ most base is he who,‘ neath the shade

Of Freedom's ensign plies corruption's trade,

And makes the sacred flag he dares to show

His passport to the market of her foe,

Yet, yet, I own, so venerably dear

Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear,

That I enjoy them, tho’ by traitors sung,

And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue.

Nay, when the constitution has expired,

I'll have such men, like Irish wakers, hired

To chant old “Habeas Corpus” by its side,

And ask in purchased ditties why it died?

See yon smooth lord whom nature's plastic pains

Would seem to've fashioned for those Eastern reigns

When eunuchs flourisht, and such nerveless things

As men rejected were the chosen of kings;—

Even he, forsooth, ( oh fraud, of all the worst! )

Dared to assume the patriot's name at first —

Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;

Thus devils when first raised take pleasing shapes.

But oh, poor Ireland! if revenge be sweet

For centuries of wrong, for dark deceit

And withering insult — for the Union thrown

Into thy bitter cup when that alone

Of slavery's draught was wanting— if for this

Revenge be sweet, thou hast that daemon's bliss;

For sure‘ tis more than hell's revenge to fee

That England trusts the men who've ruined thee:—

That in these awful days when every hour

Creates some new or blasts some ancient power,

When proud Napoleon like the enchanted shield

Whose light compelled each wondering foe to yield,

With baleful lustre blinds the brave and free

And dazzles Europe into slavery,—

That in this hour when patriot zeal should guide,

When Mind should rule and — Fox should not have died,

All that devoted England can oppose

To enemies made fiends and friends made foes,

Is the rank refuse, the despised remains

Of that unpitying power, whose whips and chains

Drove Ireland first to turn with harlot glance

Towards other shores and woo the embrace of France;—

Those hacked and tainted tools, so foully fit

For the grand artisan of mischief, Pitt,

So useless ever but in vile employ,

So weak to save, so vigorous to destroy —

Such are the men that guard thy threatened shore,

Oh England! sinking England! boast no more.