8. We will have the man who ever has and will support our cause, and maintain our rights, who stands forth to us, and who will never be guided by Secret Influence!
9. And the people shouted, and cried with an exceeding loud voice, saying “Fox is the man!”
10. Then they caused the trumpets to be sounded, as at the feast of the full moon, and sang, “Long live Fox, may our champion live for ever! Amen!”
In Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for October, 1817, there appeared an article entitled “Translation of an ancient Chaldee Manuscript,” it commenced on page 89, and ended at the foot of page 96. It was written in Biblical phraseology and was divided into four chapters, each of which was subdivided into verses. The parody was made on a certain chapter of Ezekiel, and was introduced by a preface, stating that it was a translation of a Chaldee manuscript preserved in a great library at Paris.
Professor Ferrier, in a Notice appended to Christopher North’s Nodes Ambrosianae, says “this trenchant satire on men and things in the metropolis of Scotland, excited the most indescribable commotion at the time—so much noise, indeed, that never since has it been permitted to make any noise whatever, having been pitilessly suppressed in consequence of threatened legal proceedings.” But some prosecutions were nevertheless commenced, and one was referred to the private decision of a Scotch judge, who, it is said, convicted the Publisher, and fined him two hundred and thirty pounds, for a foul and indecent libel.
The November number, 1817, of Blackwood’s Magazine contained the following:—
Note from the Editor.
“The Editor has learned with regret, that an article in the First Edition of last Number, which was intended merely as a jeu d’esprit, has been construed so as to give offence to individuals justly entitled to respect and regard; he has on that account withdrawn it in the Second Edition, and can only add, that if what has happened could have been anticipated, the article in question certainly never would have appeared.
With the December Number will be given eight pages, to supply the deficiency occasioned by the omission of the article, Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript.”