The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Part 201

AN EXPOSTULATION TO LORD KING.

_"quem das finem, rex magne, laborum?"_ VERGIL.

1826.

How _can_ you, my Lord, thus delight to torment all The Peers of the realm about cheapening their corn,[1]

When you know, if one hasn't a very high rental, 'Tis hardly worth while being very high born?

Why bore them so rudely, each night of your life, On a question, my Lord, there's so much to abhor in?

A question-like asking one, "How is your wife?"-- At once so confounded _domestic_ and _foreign_.

As to weavers, no matter how poorly they feast; But Peers and such animals, fed up for show, (Like the well-physickt elephant, lately deceased,) Take a wonderful quantum of cramming, you know.

You might see, my dear Baron, how bored and distrest Were their high n.o.ble hearts by your merciless tale, When the force of the agony wrung even a jest From the frugal Scotch wit of my Lord Lauderdale![2]

Bright Peer! to whom Nature and Berwicks.h.i.+re gave A humor endowed with effects so provoking, That when the whole House looks unusually grave You may always conclude that Lord Lauderdale's joking!

And then, those unfortunate weavers of Perth-- Not to know the vast difference Providence dooms Between weavers of Perth and Peers of high birth, 'Twixt those who have _heir_looms, and those who've but looms!

"To talk _now_ of starving!"--as great Athol said[3]-- (And the n.o.bles all cheered and the bishops all wondered,) "When some years ago he and others had fed "Of these same hungry devils about fifteen hundred!"

It follows from hence--and the Duke's very words Should be publisht wherever poor rogues of this craft are-- That weavers, _once_ rescued from starving by Lords, Are bound to be starved by said Lords ever after.

When Rome was uproarious, her knowing patricians Made "Bread and the Circus" a cure for each _row_; But not so the plan of _our_ n.o.ble physicians, "No Bread and the Treadmill,"'s the regimen now.

So cease, my dear Baron of Ockham, your prose, As I shall my poetry--_neither_ convinces; And all we have spoken and written but shows, When you tread on a n.o.bleman's _corn_,[4]

how he winces.

[1] See the proceedings of the Lords, Wednesday, March 1, 1826, when Lord King was severely reproved by several of the n.o.ble Peers, for making so many speeches against the Corn Laws.

[2] This n.o.ble Earl said, that "when he heard the pet.i.tion came from ladies' boot and shoe-makers, he thought it must be against the 'corns' which they inflicted on the fair s.e.x."

[3] The Duke of Athol said, that "at a former period, when these weavers were in great distress, the landed interest of Perth had supported 1500 of them, it was a poor return for these very men now to pet.i.tion against the persons who had fed them."

[4] An improvement, we flatter ourselves, on Lord L.'s joke.

THE SINKING FUND CRIED.

"Now what, we ask, is become of this Sinking Fund--these eight millions of surplus above expenditure, which were to reduce the interest of the national debt by the amount of four hundred thousand pounds annually? Where, indeed, is the Sinking Fund itself?"

--_The Times_.

Take your bell, take your bell, Good Crier, and tell To the Bulls and the Bears, till their ears are stunned, That, lost or stolen, Or fallen thro' a hole in The Treasury floor, is the Sinking Fund!

O yes! O yes!

Can anybody guess What the deuce has become of this Treasury wonder?

It has Pitt's name on't, All bra.s.s, in the front, And Robinson's scrawled with a goose-quill under.

Folks well knew what Would soon be its lot, When Frederick and Jenky set hob-n.o.bbing,[1]

And said to each other, "Suppose, dear brother, "We make this funny old Fund worth robbing."

We are come, alas!

To a very pretty pa.s.s-- Eight Hundred Millions of score, to pay,

With but Five in the till, To discharge the bill, And even that Five, too, whipt away!

Stop thief! stop thief!-- From the Sub to the Chief, These _Gemmen_ of Finance are plundering cattle-- Call the watch--call Brougham, Tell Joseph Hume, That best of Charleys, to spring his rattle.

Whoever will bring This aforesaid thing To the well-known House of Robinson and Jenkin, Shall be paid, with thanks, In the notes of banks, Whose Funds have all learned "the Art of Sinking."

O yes! O yes!

Can anybody guess What the devil has become of this Treasury wonder?

It has Pitt's name on't, All bra.s.s, in the front, And Robinson's, scrawled with a goose-quill under.

[1] In 1824, when the Sinking Fund was raised by the imposition of new taxes to the sum of five millions.

ODE TO THE G.o.dDESS CERES.

BY SIR THOMAS LETHBRIDGE.

"legiferoe Cereri Phoeboque."--VERGIL.

Dear G.o.ddess of Corn whom the ancients, we know, (Among other odd whims of those comical bodies,) Adorned with somniferous poppies to show Thou wert always a true Country-gentleman's G.o.ddess.

Behold in his best shooting-jacket before thee An eloquent 'Squire, who most humbly beseeches.

Great Queen of Mark-lane (if the thing doesn?t bore thee), Thou'lt read o'er the last of his--_never_-last speeches.

Ah! Ceres, thou knowest not the slander and scorn Now heapt upon England's 'Squirearchy, so boasted; Improving on Hunt,[1] 'tis no longer the Corn, 'Tis the _growers_ of Corn that are now, alas! roasted.

In speeches, in books, in all shapes they attack us-- Reviewers, economists--fellows no doubt That you, my dear Ceres and Venus and Bacchus And G.o.ds of high fas.h.i.+on, know little about.