BRITAIN'S PROSPERITY. A NEW SONG, WHICH OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN SUNG

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BRITAIN'S PROSPERITY. A NEW SONG, WHICH OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN SUNG BY THE PREMIER AT THE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT. I.

IX.

As for you paltry persisting Protectionists,
Why should you prate of the labourer's cause?
Don't you observe you are mere Resurrectionists
Trying to get at the grave of the laws?
Honest Peel strangled them,
Then the Whigs mangled them,
Coffined, and sank them with Cobden's applause.

X.

Any such notions I think you had best bury
Deep in the grave where your idol is laid:
Then, from the lips of the member for Westbury,
Take a sound lesson in matters of trade.
List to his prophecies—
We'll keep our offices
Snug, till your final conversion is made.

XI.

Deuce take those breechesless rascals the Highlanders!
Let them go starve on their beggarly hills:
Irish impostors, and kelp-making Islanders,
Can't they find room in our poor-law Bastilles?
Or, for variety,
Though there's satiety,
Let them be packed to the calico mills!

XII.

Wages must tumble, like leaves in a hurricane,
Under this grand competition for work:
Britons shall toil for the Jew and American,
Chinaman, Spaniard, Mulatto, and Turk—
Each village Hannibal,
Fierce as a cannibal,
Eyeing his neighbour like Bishop or Burke!

XIII.

These are the triumphs of science political—
These are the views by the Whigs patronised.
Tories may scout them; but, ne'ertheless, it I call
Such a grand scheme as was seldom devised.
How is it robbery?
Cheapness and jobbery
Are the twin saints whom we've just canonised.

XIV.

Under the free-trading auspices, true it is
Some time or other taxation may pinch.
Then for a shy at the Funds and Annuities!
We'll take a yard since you gave us an inch.
Hush, Mr Newdegate!
Why not repudiate,
Just as was done by the pupils of Lynch?

XV.

Worthy Sir Robert, that statesman immaculate,
Doubled his fortune by doubling the pound:
Even the wisest may sometimes miscalculate—
Surely he will not object to refund?
"That were a merry go!
See you at Jericho!"
O—very well—I abandon that ground.

XVI.

Shortly—I say, with habitual bonhomie,
Everything's quite as we Ministers wish,
Plenty and peace are combined with economy,
Food is abundant—provide you the dish.
Pay to the foreigner,
Peasant and mariner,
All you can raise for your loaf and your fish.

XVII.

Banish all notions of British ascendency,
Let them be wiped from our memory quite;
Modern views have an opposite tendency,
As hath been clearly expounded by Bright.
Let us be sensible—
Britain's defensible,
Not by brute force, but by maxims of right.

XVIII.

We, for the voice of the populace amorous,
Willing to do anything they require,
Shall, if hereafter they chance to grow clamorous,
Yield just precisely the thing they desire:
We are quite ready to
March with a steady toe
Out of the frying-pan into the fire.

XIX.

Stink, like the inmates of Huxtable's piggery,
Up to the knees in an exquisite draff,
Stand the determined apostles of Whiggery,
Chewing the grain, and rejecting the chaff.
Ay, Mr Huxtable!
Not from your muck stable,
Issues so hearty a grunting or laugh!

XX.

This, I maintain, of our state is the very type—
Joseph's fat cattle and atrophied kine.
We, for the first, may be ta'en by Daguerreotype:
Who are the second, you well may divine.
Yea, of a verity!
Britain's prosperity,
Means nothing else than the measure of mine!


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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