Surely the philosophers are right who have reasoned that England’s northern air is accountable for Englishmen’s love of liberty, and many a question has been lost by Administration from Parliament’s meeting in cold weather. An obvious solution would be to alter the season of meeting:
But ah, what honest squire would stay
To make his speech, instead of hay?
The Beaux would scarcely think of law,
To give up Scarborough or Spa’:
And say ye sportsmen, wou’d a member
Attend St. Stephen’s in September?
The poet’s more feasible plan is a better mode of heating the Parliament buildings. He suggests that in each House, replacing the table where votes, journals, and mace are laid, a vast “Buzaglo”[1] be set up; that is, an open fire of intense heat, over which a Fire Committee should preside with a fuel supply of seditious tracts—Junius, Common Sense, and the works of Tucker and Price. Such a device will mollify the most inveterate foes of Administration:
From bench to bench, in spite of gout,
The soften’d Chatham moves about: