And with one daring stroke for ever close
The fount and origin of these our woes.
Till man, who holds so light our proper charms,
Is brought to reason by material arins,
And learns afresh, what all his fathers knew,
His highest function, our most cherished due.
2d Lady. Here we sit our treason netting,
Talking words that might have hung us,
All the while like geese forgetting
There may be an Owl among us.
Jokes that men unthinking utter,
And repent to-day with sorrow,
On mysterious pinions flutter
Through the laughing town to-morrow.
Nought is over Lethe ferried,
Statesman's pledge or lover's token,
Secrets none securely buried,
Since those wondrous birds have spoken.
Never knew I what a rage meant
Till mamma looked black and solemn
At the sight of Jane's engagement
In the editorial column.
Yes, my Charley, I've a notion
That a youth who shall be nameless
Wrote The Diary of Göschen,
Though he looks so meek and blameless.
Yet, your observations jotting
Down until a note-book's filled, you
Play the spy on this our plotting,
Blighting every scheme like mildew,
As 'midst rabbits steals a ferret,
As on street-boys swoop the beadles.
By the rules of war you merit
Death upon our crochet needles.
[They surround GAY in a threatening attitude.
Lady Matilda.-The Whig profane who rudely pries
In regions masked from vulgar eyes,-
Who once has trod the sacred rug
Where Tories lounge in conclave snug,
And listen while their chiefs recite
The tactics of a coming fight,
Or speculate in murmurs low
How far the Cave intends to go,-
That rash intrusive wasp alive
Will never quit the Carlton hive.
We, less severe, accord you leave
To earn an undeserved reprieve
By coaxing with harmonious call
Your vagrant brethren hither all,
And warning them in silence deep
But choose an air and measure new :
For since that vocal drive from Kew
I'm sick of your Beloved Star,
Which was so Near and yet so Far.
Gay [sings.]-Gentle birds of plumage tawny,
Whom the pale policeman greets
Flitting nestwards, as at dawn he
Treads his weary round of streets;
Tribe vivacious, bound to serve a
Term of seasons to Minerva ;
This a poet, that a sceptic;
Tufted some, and others crestless;
Roguish, easy, gay, eupeptic,
Frisky, truant, vague, and restless;
Haunt and perch for ever changing
As the needs of gossip call;
Towards the hour of luncheon ranging
Round the board-rooms of Whitehall,
Where a busy race of men
Tie the tape and drive the pen,
Till the welcome stroke of four
Open throws their office door.
There the food which suits his humour
Never yet an Owl has lacked:
Scraps of talk and crumbs of rumour,
Here a guess, and there a fact.
So, through each Department hopping,
Culling truth, and fiction dropping,
Off you fly to print and risk it,
When your crop with news is stored
By some lazy junior lord
Yawning o'er his mid-day biscuit.
Once again, when chill and dark
Twilight thins the swarming park,
Bearing home his social gleaning,
Jests and riddles fraught with meaning,
Scandals, anecdotes, reports,
Seeks the fowl a maze of courts
Which, with aspect towards the west,
Fringe the street of sainted James,
Where a warm secluded nest
As his sole domain he claims;
From his wing a feather draws,
Shapes for use a dainty nib,
Pens his parody or squib,
Combs his down, and trims his claws,
And repairs where windows bright
Flood the sleepless square with light;
Where behind the tables stand
Gunter's deaf and voiceless band;
Where his own persuasive hoot
While, retiring and advancing,
Softly through the music's storm,
Timid girls discourse on dancing,
And are mute about Reform;
In a sea of flounces swimming;
Waves of rustling tulle above;
Strewn below the wrecks of trimming,
Shattered fan and crumpled glove.
Hark! The clock! 'Tis twelve already!
Now an owl, of habits steady,
Having blinked the roost enough in,
Bustles towards his morning club,
Eager for his Times and muffin,
Rosy from the vanquished tub,
Hungry as an athlete brawny,
Brisker than a Treasury whip.
Gentle birds of plumage tawny,
Round your mate in coveys trip!
Tu-whit! Tu-whoo! Tu-whit! Tu-whoo!
When they see I'm of a feather
All the tuneful, roving crew
Speedily will flock together.
Enter Chorus of Owls.
Chorus.--What the dickens means our brother
By tu-whitting and tu-whooing?
Much we fear he's laid another
Pun as he is always doing;
Or has hatched a long acrostic
From the dictionary taken;
Something fit to pose a Gnostic,
And defy the skill of Bacon.
Has he found the rhyme for "Lytton,"
To complete his stanzas needed?
Or the whispered marriage hit on,
Which we knew as soon as he did?
Can it be that he's offended
At our leaving out his poem?
Yet no insult was intended,
As the want of space must show him.
But now for half an hour must cease
The plot and business of the piece :
Because the audience has been
Long anxious for a change of scene,
In dread of getting, ere it budges,
As old as Derby's Irish judges.
So shift the canvass, while we speak
A chorus modelled from the Greek.
We wish to praise our sires, who were a mighty race of men.1
For every glass of port we drink they nothing thought of ten.
1 In this passage an attempt has been made to imitate the jovial conservatism which goes
They dwelt above the foulest drains. They breathed the closest air.
They had their yearly twinge of gout, and little seemed to care.
They caught the small-pox when they chose. The rules of health to meet
With strict observance twice a month they washed their necks and feet.
They set those meddling people down for Jacobins or fools
Who talked of public libraries, and grants to normal schools;
Since common folks who read, and write, and like their betters speak,
Want something more than pipes, and beer, and sermons once a week.
And therefore both by land and sea their match they rarely met,
But made the name of Britain great and ran her deep in debt.
They seldom stopped to count the foe, nor sum the moneys spent,
But clenched their teeth and straight ahead with sword and musket went.
And, though they thought if trade were free that England ne'er would thrive,
They freely gave their blood for Moore, and Wellington, and Clive.
And, though they burned their coal at home, nor fetched their ice from Wenham,
They played the man before Quebec and stormed the lines at Blenheim.
When sailors lived on mouldy bread, and lumps of rusty pork,
No Frenchman dared his nose to show between the Downs and Cork;
But now that Jack gets beef and greens, and next his skin wears flannel,
The Standard says we've not a ship in plight to keep the Channel.
And, while they held their own in war, our fathers showed no stint
Of fire, and nerve, and vigour rough, whene'er they took to print.
They charged at hazard through the crowd, and recked not whom they hurt,
And taught their Pegasus to kick and splash about the dirt;
And every jolly Whig who drank at Brookes's joined to goad
That poor young Heaven-born Minister with epigram and ode,
Because he would not call a main, nor shake the midnight box,
Nor flirt with all the pretty girls, like gallant Charley Fox.
But now the press has squeamish grown, and thinks invective rash;
And telling hits no longer lurk 'neath asterisk and dash;
And poets deal in epithets as soft as skeins of silk,
Nor dream of calling silly lords a curd of ass's milk.
And satirists confine their art to cutting jokes on Beales,
Or snap like
angry puppies round a mightier tribune's heels:
Discussing whether he can scan and understand the lines
About the Trojan Horse, and where and in what clothes he dines:
Though gentlemen should blush to talk as if they cared a button
Because one night in Chesham Place he ate his slice of mutton.
Since ever party strife began the world is still the same,
And Radicals from age to age are held the fairest game.
E'en thus the Prince of Attic drolls, who dearly loved to sup
With those who gave the fattest eels and choicest Samian cup,
Expended his immortal fun on that unhappy tanner
Who twenty centuries ago was waving Gladstone's banner :
And in the troubled days of Rome each curled and scented jackass
Who lounged along the Sacred Way heehawed at Caius Gracchus.
So now all paltry jesters run their maiden wit to flesh on
A block of rugged Saxon oak, that shows no light impression;
At which whoe'er aspires to chop had better guard his eye,
Then surely it were best to drop an over-worried bone,
And, if we've nothing new to say, just let the League alone;
Or work another vein, and quiz those patrons of their race
Who like the honest working-man, but like him in his place ;-
Who bid us mark that artisans their apathy display,
And prove how cheaply they regard the question of the day
By forming little groups of which some four would make a million
To see the Mayor of Birmingham behind a blue postilion ;-
Who, proud of rivalling the pig which started for Dundalk
Because it thought that Paddy wished towards Carlingford to walk,
In slavish contradiction all their private judgment smother
And blindly take one course because John Bright prefers another.
FIFTY-EIGHT members of an Assembly professedly representative, in a country whose population is about thirty millions, and which is perpetually congratulating itself on the possession of self-government, are returned by eleven thousand electors, being the aggregate constituencies of thirty boroughs,-that is to say, by less than one six-hundredth part of the whole adult male population, and less than a hundredth part of the whole electoral body; a statement which may afford some idea of the extent to which not only the people in general, but the electors, are in the enjoyment of real representation and of that political liberty which representation is intended to confer.
These eleven thousand electors, finding their suffrages far more valuable than those of voters in general, but having no greater interest in politics nor any superiority, intellectual, moral, or ma terial, and being usually without any means of judging as to the particular merits of candidates unchosen by themselves, are, it appears, for the most part in the habit of selling the votes to the highest bidder, or at least of requiring a sum of money as the condition on which
is this. An amount of political power sufficient to influence in a very important degree the present and future welfare of the whole community is placed in the hands of an extremely small number of persons, not one of whom is supposed to have any special claim to its possession ; and the members who are thus sent to Parliament with the fate of the nation in their hands are sent there (speaking generally) for the simple reason that they have money to spend, and are willing to spend it. A more disastrous distortion of the whole theory of representation it is difficult to conceive. Representative institutions, as distinct from other political systems, have two objects in view,—a Legislative Assembly composed of men whose character and capacity afford security for good government, and (irrespectively of good government) the mental and moral welfare of the electors. The result of existing arrangements, so far as these borough voters are concerned, is a degraded electoral community and a plutocratic Legislature.
The facts thus stated in the way of illustration sufficiently explain the nature of an evil which affects a much larger
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