DUDLEY ELECTION, 1832.
1
NOW Dudley boys!
Exalt your joys,
Nor fear the Tory faction;
Lord Russell’s Bill,
Indeed it will
Reduce them to a fraction.
2
CAMPBELL you know
Is sure to go,
Though all their might are using;
Horace’s friends
Can’t gain their ends;
They have no chance but losing.
3
Frank, Tom, and Paul,
Isaac, and all,
Their slaves will call together;
The SHIP REFORM
Their puny storm
With perfect ease will weather.
4
No doubt they’ll try
To place him high
On the first day of polling;
Then Lygon like,
He soon will strike,
Down like a stone come rolling.
So Parson Ned
Gives meat and bread
To those who will but hear him;
With bread and meat,
And a free seat,
The poor folks won’t go near him.
6
The reason’s plain.
He’s short of brain,
And wants what still is better;
To make men slaves
The madman raves—
Says gold shall be their fetters.
7
Won’t SOUP nor ALE?
NOR GOLD PREVAIL?
Whatever is the matter?
The people see,
And will be free—
Justice demands the latter.
8
’Twixt Church and state,
The wound’s so great,
It can’t again be healed;
What with the Tithes,
And Parsons’ lives,
Poor Church her doom is sealed!
9
They say old Gray
Has turned away—
Horace St. Paul preferring;
And tinker Dick,
That honest stick,
It seems some brass is stirring.
10
Where is great John
The Draper gone,
Chairman at last Election?
The Bowling Green,
That source of spleen,
Which led to his detection.
11
Highway Robbers,
Church-Rate jobbers,
And such as have a pension;
All of one mind,
You soon will find,
Most prompt in their attention.
12
Now once for all,
We’ll have no Paul!
Indeed it would be folly;
Led by the nose,
By our old foes—
Rough Joe and Doctor Molly.
As a great amount of talk and contention has of late been indulged in by all classes of ratepayers, in reference to the proceedings of the Dudley Town Council; more especially about the Deep Drainage, and the Public Baths, &c., it may not be out of place in preserving a record of the names of those gentlemen and ratepayers who, in 1864, appended their names to the largest requisition ever signed in this town, “for the purpose of considering the desirability of presenting a petition to the Queen in Council, praying Her Majesty to grant a Charter of Incorporation to this Borough.”