To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears,
And sweating in his fervice, his caprice
Becomes the foul that animates them all..
He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives,
Spent in the purchase of renown for him,
An easy reckoning; and they think the fame.
Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings
Were burnished into heroes, and became
The arbiters of this terraqueous fwamp;
Storks among frogs, that have but croaked and died.
Strange, that fuch folly, as lifts bloated man
To eminence fit only for a god,
Should ever drivel out of human lips,
Even in the cradled weakness of the world!
Still ftranger much, that when at length mankind
Had reached the finewy firmness of their youth,
And could difcriminate and argue well
On subjects more mysterious, they were yet
Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear
And quake before the gods themselves had made:
But above measure ftrange, that neither proof
Of fad experience, nor examples fet
By fome, whofe patriot virtue has prevailed,
Can even now, when they are grown mature
In wisdom, and with philofophic deeds
Familiar, ferve to emancipate the rest!
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To reverence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even fervitude, the worst of ills,
Because delivered down from fire to fon,
Is kept and guarded as a facred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the fhock
Of rational difcuffion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust
And folly in as ample measure meet,
As in the bofoms of the flaves he rules,
Should be a defpot abfolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land?
Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will,
Wage war, with any or with no pretence
Of provocation given, or wrong fuftained,
And force the beggarly last doit by means,
That his own humour dictates, from the clutch
Of poverty, that thus he may procure
His thousands, weary of penurious life,
A fplendid opportunity to die?
Say ye, who (with lefs prudence than of old.
Jotham ascribed to his assembled trees
In politic convention) put your truft
In the shadow of a bramble, and reclined
In fancied peace beneath his dangerous branch,.
Rejoice in him, and celebrate his fway,
Where find ye paffive fortitude? Whence springs
Your self-denying zeal, that holds it good
To ftroke the prickly grievance, and to hang
His thorns with ftreamers of continual praise?
We too are friends to loyalty. We love
The king, who loves the law, refpects his bounds,
And reigns content within them: him we serve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free:
But recollecting ftill that he is man,
We truft him not too far. King though he be,
And king in England too, he may be weak,
And vain enough to be ambitious ftill;
May exercise amifs his proper powers,
Or covet more than freemen choose to grant:
Beyond that mark is treafon. He is our's
To administer, to guard, to adorn, the state,
But not to warp or change it. We are his
To serve him nobly in the common cause,
True to the death, but not to be his flaves.
Mark now the difference, ye that boaft your
Of kings, between your loyalty and our's.
We love the man, the paltry pageant you:
We the chief patron of the commonwealth,
You the regardless author of its woes:
We for the fake of liberty a king,
You chains and bondage for a tyrant's fake.
Our love is principle, and has its root
In reafon, is judicious, manly, free;
Your's, a blind inftinct, crouches to the rod,
And licks the foot, that treads it in the duft.
Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,
Sterling, and worthy of a wife man's wish,
I would not be a king to be beloved
Caufelefs, and daubed with undifcerning praise,
Where love is mere attachment to the throne,
Not to the man, who fills it as he ought.
Whose freedom is by fufferance, and at will Of a fuperior, he is never free.
Who lives, and is not weary of a life
Exposed to manacles, deferves them well.
The state, that fitrives for liberty, though foiled,
And forced to abandon what she bravely fought,
Deferves at leaft applaufe for her attempt,
And pity for her lofs. But that's a cause
Not often unsuccessful: power ufurped
Is weakness when opposed: conscious of wrong,
'Tis pufillanimous and prone to flight.
But flaves, that once conceive the glowing thought
Of freedom, in that hope itself poffefs
All that the conteft calls for; fpirit, ftrength,
The fcorn of danger, and united hearts;
The fureft prefage of the good they feek *.
Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more
To France than all her loffes and defeats,
Old or of later date, by fea or land,
Her house of bondage, worse than that of old
Which God avenged on Pharaoh—the Bastile.
Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts;
Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair,
*The author hopes that he shall not be cenfured for unneceffary warmth upon fo interesting a subject. He is aware that it is become almost fashionable to ftigmatize such fentiments as no better than empty declamation; but it is an ill symptom, and peculiar to modern times.
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