THE ROYAL COCKNEYS IN AMERICA

Why travel so far from your insular home,

Ye cockneys of London, and all in a foam,

To talk, and to talk, with coxcombical phiz,

And tell what a nuisance democracy is:

Twas a lesson we learn'd

When you were concern'd

In wishing success to the vast preparations

To conquer and pillage the royal-plantations.

We Americans far from your king-ridden isle

Do humbly beseech you, all democrat haters,

For fear that your bodies or souls you defile,

Would fairly go off, with your lies and your satires:

The monarch you worship requests your assistance,

And how can you help him at such a long distance?

Tis an Englishman's creed,

And they all have agreed

That, out of old England, there's nothing, they swear,

That can with old England — dear England — compare;

So, away to old England, or we'll send you there.

A swarm is arrived from the hives of the east,

Determined to sap the republic's foundation;

And who is their leader, their scribe, and their priest?

Why, Porcupine Peter,

The democrat-eater,

Transported by Pitt, at the charge of the nation,

To preach to the demos a new revelation.

His patrons in England, and some who are here,

Consented to join in his sink of scurrility,

And gave him, tis certain, four thousand a year

To print a damn'd libel, to please our nobility:

Where I — is the hero of all that is said

I — Corporal Cobbett - a man of the blade!

If his countrymen thought

That for nothing we fought

And they mean to regain, by the aid of his press,

A country they lost, to their shame and disgrace,

Let them fairly engage

In some liberal page:

We can give them an answer, not relish'd by some,

Who will see their friend Peter go, whimpering, home.