What need we care though a desperate peasantry
Prowl round the stackyards with tinder and match?
Blandly we'll smile at such practical pleasantry:
Downing Street is not surmounted by thatch.
We're not prohibiting
Some gentle gibbeting
When the poor starving delinquents you catch.
VII.
Cobden, our oracle, swears it is vanity
Ever to dream of protection again:
Wilson declares it is downright insanity,
Also he proves it by figures and pen.
Sheets arithmetical,
Clearly prophetical,
Flow from the quills of these eminent men.
VIII.
Likewise M'Gregor, that brilliant Glaswegian,
Whom we desiderate always to speak,
Hath, by the aid of some second-sight Stygian,
Promised us shortly two millions per week.
"Whaur shall we pit it, sirs?"—
Wait till you get it, sirs!
Zooks! what a prospect of bubble and squeak!
IX.
As for you paltry persisting Protectionists,
Why should you prate of the labourer's cause?
Don't you observe you are mere Resurrectionists
Trying to get at the grave of the laws?
Honest Peel strangled them,
Then the Whigs mangled them,
Coffined, and sank them with Cobden's applause.
X.
Any such notions I think you had best bury
Deep in the grave where your idol is laid:
Then, from the lips of the member for Westbury,
Take a sound lesson in matters of trade.
List to his prophecies—
We'll keep our offices
Snug, till your final conversion is made.