THE ROYAL COCKNEYS IN AMERICA[145]
1797
Why travel so far from your insular home,
Ye cockneys of London, and all in a foam,
To talk, and to talk, with coxcombical phiz,
And tell what a nuisance democracy is:
Twas a lesson we learn'd
When you were concern'd
In wishing success to the vast preparations
To conquer and pillage the royal-plantations.
We Americans far from your king-ridden isle
Do humbly beseech you, all democrat haters,
For fear that your bodies or souls you defile,
Would fairly go off, with your lies and your satires:
The monarch you worship requests your assistance,
And how can you help him at such a long distance?
Tis an Englishman's creed,
And they all have agreed
That, out of old England, there's nothing, they swear,
That can with old England—dear England—compare;
So, away to old England, or we'll send you there.
A swarm is arrived from the hives of the east,
Determined to sap the republic's foundation;
And who is their leader, their scribe, and their priest?
Why, Porcupine Peter,
The democrat-eater,
Transported by Pitt, at the charge of the nation,
To preach to the demos a new revelation.
His patrons in England, and some who are here,
Consented to join in his sink of scurrility,
And gave him, tis certain, four thousand a year
To print a damn'd libel, to please our nobility:
Where I—is the hero of all that is said
I—Corporal Cobbett[A]-a man of the blade!
If his countrymen thought
That for nothing we fought
And they mean to regain, by the aid of his press,
A country they lost, to their shame and disgrace,
Let them fairly engage
In some liberal page:
We can give them an answer, not relish'd by some,
Who will see their friend Peter go, whimpering, home.
[A] Alluding to the egotistical style of his writings.—Freneau's note.
[145] From the edition of 1815.