I only wish Mr. Wilberforce or some of them that pities the niggers,
Would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable starving figures,
A-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each other,
And a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking Father and Mother.
They haven’t a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread and needles,
But crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of common black beadles.
If they’d only inquired before passing the Act and taken a few such peeps,
I don’t think that any real gentleman would have set his face against sweeps.
Climbin’s an ancient respectable art, and if History’s of any vally,
Was recommended by Queen Elizabeth to the great Sir Walter Raleigh,