AN EXCELLENT NEW SONG[1] ON A SEDITIOUS PAMPHLET. 1720-21
To the tune of "Packington's Pound."
Brocades, and damasks, and tabbies, and gauzes,
Are, by Robert Ballantine, lately brought over,
With forty things more: now hear what the law says,
Whoe'er will not wear them is not the king's lover.
Though a printer and Dean,
Seditiously mean,
Our true Irish hearts from Old England to wean,
We'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
In England the dead in woollen are clad,
The Dean and his printer then let us cry fie on;
To be clothed like a carcass would make a Teague mad,
Since a living dog better is than a dead lion.
Our wives they grow sullen
At wearing of woollen,
And all we poor shopkeepers must our horns pull in.
Then we'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
Whoever our trading with England would hinder,
To inflame both the nations do plainly conspire,
Because Irish linen will soon turn to tinder,
And wool it is greasy, and quickly takes fire.
Therefore, I assure ye,
Our noble grand jury,
When they saw the Dean's book, they were in a great fury;
They would buy English silks for their wives and their daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
This wicked rogue Waters, who always is sinning,
And before coram nobis so oft has been call'd,
Henceforward shall print neither pamphlets nor linen,
And if swearing can do't shall be swingingly maul'd:
And as for the Dean,
You know whom I mean,
If the printer will peach him, he'll scarce come off clean.
Then we'll buy English silks for our wives and our daughters,
In spite of his deanship and journeyman Waters.
[Footnote 1: This ballad alludes to the Dean's "Proposal for the use of
Irish Manufactures," for which the printer was prosecuted with great
violence. Lord Chief-Justice Whitshed sent the jury repeatedly out of
court, until he had wearied them into a special verdict. See Swift's
Letter to Pope, Jan. 1721, and "Prose Works," vii, 13.—W. E. B.]
THE RUN UPON THE BANKERS[1]
The bold encroachers on the deep
Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune, with one general sweep,
Turns all again to barren strand.
The multitude's capricious pranks
Are said to represent the seas,
Breaking the bankers and the banks,
Resume their own whene'er they please.
Money, the life-blood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains.
Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
Of duns attending at their gate.
We want our money on the nail;
The banker's ruin'd if he pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;
The birds are met to strip the jays.
"Riches," the wisest monarch sings,
"Make pinions for themselves to fly;"[2]
They fly like bats on parchment wings,
And geese their silver plumes supply.
No money left for squandering heirs!
Bills turn the lenders into debtors:
The wish of Nero[3] now is theirs,
"That they had never known their letters."
Conceive the works of midnight hags,
Tormenting fools behind their backs:
Thus bankers, o'er their bills and bags,
Sit squeezing images of wax.
Conceive the whole enchantment broke;
The witches left in open air,
With power no more than other folk,
Exposed with all their magic ware.
So powerful are a banker's bills,
Where creditors demand their due;
They break up counters, doors, and tills,
And leave the empty chests in view.
Thus when an earthquake lets in light
Upon the god of gold and hell,
Unable to endure the sight,
He hides within his darkest cell.
As when a conjurer takes a lease
From Satan for a term of years,
The tenant's in a dismal case,
Whene'er the bloody bond appears.
A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall,
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
'Tis like the writing on the wall.[4]
How will the caitiff wretch be scared,
When first he finds himself awake
At the last trumpet, unprepared,
And all his grand account to make!
For in that universal call,
Few bankers will to heaven be mounters;
They'll cry, "Ye shops, upon us fall!
Conceal and cover us, ye counters!"
When other hands the scales shall hold,
And they, in men's and angels' sight
Produced with all their bills and gold,
"Weigh'd in the balance and found light!"
[Footnote 1: This poem was printed some years ago, and it should seem, by
the late failure of two bankers, to be somewhat prophetic. It was
therefore thought fit to be reprinted.—Dublin Edition, 1734.]
[Footnote 2: Solomon, Proverbs, ch. xxiii, v. 5.]
[Footnote 3: Who, in his early days of empire, having to sign the
sentence of a condemned criminal, exclaimed: "Quam vellem nescire
litteras!" Suetonius, 10; and Seneca, "De Clementia,", cited by
Montaigne, "De l'inconstance de nos actions."—W. E. B.]
[Footnote 4: Daniel, ch. v, verses 25, 26, 27, 28.—W. E. B.]