THE ANNUAL PILL.

Supposed to be sung by OLD PROsy, the Jew, in the
character of Major C-RTW-GHT.

VILL nobodies try my nice Annual Pill,

Dat's to purify everyting nashty avay? Pless ma heart, pless ma heart, let me say vat I vill, Not a Chrishtian or Shentleman minds vat I say! 'Tis so pretty a bolus !-just down let it go, And, at vonce, such a radical shange you vill

see,

Dat I'd not be surprish'd, like de horse in de show, If your heads all vere found, vere your tailsh ought to be!

Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, &c.

"Twill cure all Electors, and purge away clear

Dat mighty bad itching dey've got in deir hands

'Twill cure, too, all Statesmen, of dulness, ma tear,

Though the case vas as desperate as poor Mister VAN'S.

Dere is nothing at all vat dis Pill vill not reachGive the Sinecure Shentlemen von little grain, Pless ma heart, it vill act, like de salt on de leech, And he'll throw de pounds, shillings, and pence, up again!

Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill, &c.

"Twould be tedious, ma tear, all its peauties to paint

But among oder tings fundamentally wrong, It vill cure de Proad Pottom--a common complaint

Among M. P.'s and weavers - from sitting too long,

Should symptoms of speeching preak out on a dunce
(Vat is often de case), it vill stop de disease,
And pring avay all de long speeches at vonce,
Dat else vould, like tape-worms, come by degrees!

Vill nobodies try my nice Annual Pill,

Dat's to purify everyting nashty avay? Pless ma heart, pless ma heart, let me say vat I vill, Not a Chrishtian or Shentleman minds vat I say!

"IF" AND "PERHAPS."2

On tidings of freedom! oh accents of hope!
Waft, waft them, ye zephyrs, to Erin's blue sea,
And refresh with their sounds every son of the Pope,
From Dingle-a-cooch to far Donaghadee.

1 Meaning, I presume, Coalition Administrations.

Written after hearing a celebrated speech in the House of

"If mutely the slave will endure and obey,

Nor clanking his fetters, nor breathing his pains, "His masters, perhaps, at some far distant day, "May think (tender tyrants!) of loosening his chains."

Wise "if" and "perhaps!"-precious salve for our wounds,

If he, who would rule thus o'er manacled mutes, Could check the free spring-tide of Mind, that resounds,

Even now, at his feet, like the sea at Canute's. But, no, 'tis in vain -the grand impulse is givenMan knows his high Charter, and knowing will

claim;

And if ruin must follow where fetters are riven, Be theirs, who have forg'd them, the guilt and the shame.

"If the slave will be silent!"—vain Soldier, be

ware

There is a dead silence the wrong'd may assume, When the feeling, sent back from the lips in despair, But clings round the heart with a deadlier gloom;

When the blush, that long burn'd on the suppliant's cheek,

Gives place to the' avenger's pale, resolute hue; And the tongue, that once threaten'd, disdaining to speak,

Consigns to the arm the high office- to do.

If men, in that silence, should think of the hour, When proudly their fathers in panoply stood, Presenting, alike, a bold front-work of power

To the despot on land and the foe on the flood: That hour, when a Voice had come forth from the west,

To the slave bringing hopes, to the tyrant alarms;

And a lesson, long look'd for, was taught the opprest,

That kings are as dust before freemen in arms!

If, awfuller still, the mute slave should recall That dream of his boyhood, when Freedom's sweet day

At length seem'd to break through a long night of thrall,

And Union and Hope went abroad in its ray;

If Fancy should tell him, that Day-spring of Good, Though swiftly its light died away from his

chain,

Lords, June 10, 1828, when the motion in favour of Catholic Emancipation, brought forward by the Marquis of Lansdowne, was rejected by the House of Lords.

Air." Sleep on, sleep on, my Kathleen dear."
Salvete, fratres Asini.
ST. FRANCIS.

WRITE on, write on, ye Barons dear,
Ye Dukes, write hard and fast;
The good we've sought for many a year
Your quills will bring at last.
One letter more, N-wc-stle, pen
To match Lord K-ny-n's two,
And more than Ireland's host of men,
One brace of Peers will do.

Write on, write on, &c.

Oh ne'er, since asses spoke of yore,

Such miracles were done!

For, write but four such letters more, And Freedom's cause is won!

SONG OF THE DEPARTING SPIRIT OF TITHE.

"The parting Genius is with sighing sent." MILTON.
It is o'er, it is o'er, my reign is o'er;
I hear a Voice, from shore to shore,
From Dunfanaghy to Baltimore,
And it saith, in sad, parsonic tone,
"Great Tithe and Small are dead and gone!"

Even now, I behold your vanishing wings,
Ye Tenths of all conceivable things,
Which Adam first, as Doctors deem,
Saw, in a sort of night-mare dream,'
After the feast of fruit abhorr'd -
First indigestion on record!
Ye decimate ducks, ye chosen chicks,
Ye pigs which, though ye be Catholics,
Or of Calvin's most select deprav'd,

-

In the Church must have your bacon sav'd;-
Ye fields, where Labour counts his sheaves,
And, whatsoe'er himself believes,
Must bow to the' Establish'd Church belief,
That the tenth is always a Protestant sheaf;
Ye calves, of which the man of Heaven
Takes Irish tithe, one calf in seven2;
Ye tenths of rape, hemp, barley, flax,
Eggs, timber, milk, fish, and bees' wax;
All things, in short, since earth's creation,
Doom'd, by the Church's dispensation,
To suffer eternal decimation
Leaving the whole lay-world, since then,
Reduc'd to nine parts out of ten;

Or - as we calculate thefts and arsons
Just ten per cent, the worse for Parsons!

Alas, and is all this wise device

For the saving of souls thus gone in a trice?
The whole put down, in the simplest way,
By the souls resolving not to pay!
And even the Papists, thankless race,
Who have had so much the easiest case-
To pay for our sermons doom'd, 'tis true,
But not condemn'd to hear them, too-
(Our holy business being, 'tis known,
With the ears of their barley, not their own,)

3 Chaucer's Plowman complains of the parish rectors, that

"For the tithing of a duck,

Or an apple or an aye (egg),

They make him swear upon a boke; Thus they foulen Christ's fay."

Even they object to let us pillage,
By right divine, their tenth of tillage,
And, horror of horrors, even decline
To find us in sacramental wine!!

It is o'er, it is o'er, my reign is o'er,
Ah, never shall rosy Rector more,
Like the Shepherds of Israel, idly eat,
And make of his flock "a prey and meat." 2
No more shall be his the pastoral sport
Of suing his flock in the Bishop's Court,
Through various steps, Citation, Libel -
Scriptures all, but not the Bible;
Working the Law's whole apparatus,
To get at a few pre-doom'd potatoes,
And summoning all the powers of wig,
To settle the fraction of a pig!-
Till, parson and all committed deep
In the case of "Shepherds versus Sheep,"
The Law usurps the Gospel's place,
And, on Sundays, meeting face to face,
While Plaintiff fills the preacher's station,
Defendants form the congregation.

So lives he, Mammon's priest, not Heaven's,
For tenths thus all at sires and sevens,
Seeking what parsons love no less
Than tragic poets · -a good distress.
Instead of studying St. Augustin,
Gregory Nyss., or old St. Justin
(Books fit only to hoard dust in),

His reverence stints his evening readings
To learn'd Reports of Tithe Proceedings,
Sipping, the while, that port so ruddy,
Which forms his only ancient study;-
Port so old, you'd swear its tartar
Was of the age of Justin Martyr,
And, had he sipp'd of such, no doubt
His martyrdom would have been

-to gout.

Is all then lost? - alas, too true-
Ye Tenths belov'd, adieu, adieu!
My reign is o'er, my reign is o'er -
Like old Thumb's ghost, "I can no more."

Hide, Knowledge, hide thy rising sun, Young Freedom, veil thy head; Let nothing good be thought or done, Till Nick V-ns-tt-t's dead!

Take pity on a dotard's fears,
Who much doth light detest;
And let his last few drivelling years
Be dark as were the rest.

You, too, ye fleeting one-pound notes, Speed not so fast away

Ye rags, on which old Nicky gloats, A few months longer stay.3

Together soon, or much I err,
You both from life may go

The notes unto the scavenger,
And Nick- -to Nick below.

Ye Liberals, whate'er your plan,
Be all reforms suspended;
In compliment to dear old Van,
Let nothing bad be mended.

Ye Papists, whom oppression wrings,
Your cry politely cease,
And fret your hearts to fiddle-strings
That Van may die in peace.

So shall he win a fame sublime
By few old rag-men gain'd;
Since all shall own, in Nicky's time,
Nor sense, nor justice reign'd.

So shall his name through ages past,
And dolts ungotten yet,

Date from "the days of Nicholas," With fond and sad regret;

And sighing, say, "Alas, had he "Been spar'd from Pluto's bowers,

"The blessed reign of Bigotry

"And Rags might still be ours!"

THE EUTHANASIA OF VAN.

"We are told that the bigots are growing old and fast wearing out. If it be so, why not let us die in peace?"-LORD BEXLEY'S Letter to the Freeholders of Kent.

STOP, Intellect, in mercy stop,
Ye curst improvements, cease;

And let poor Nick V-ns-tt-t drop
Into his grave in peace.

1 Among the specimens laid before Parliament of the sort of Church rates levied upon Catholics in Ireland, was a charge of two pipes of port for sacramental wine.

2 Ezekiel, xxxiv. 10. "Neither shall the shepherds feed them

TO THE REVEREND

ONE OF THE SIXTEEN REQUISITIONISTS OF

NOTTINGHAM.

1828.

WHAT, you, too, my ******, in hashes so knowing,
Of sauces and soups Aristarchus profest!
Are you, too, my savoury Brunswicker, going
To make an old fool of yourself with the rest?

selves any more; for I will deliver my flock from their mouth, that they may not be meat for them."

3 Perituræ parcere charta.