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Room for Sir Punch!-Reporters, nibiyour pens!
And listen to the hows,' and wheres,' and' whens."
Hark! how his leathern lungs, like bellows, pant,
Heave the big speech, and puff it out in cant;
See how he licks his tooth, and screws his eye,
And twists and twirls his thumbs, he can't tell why.
Like Pythia perch'd upon the Delphic stool,
He writhes and wriggles till his mouth is full,
And then unloads a heap of stubborn stuff,
Till coughs proclaim the House has had enough;
Then down he sits with aching sides and bones,
Just like a hog, convulsed with grunts and groans.

CHORUS TO SIR PUNCH'S PERFORMANCE.

Shame to the sunken state! and Britain's pride,
That e'en, tho' beggar'd, helms a world beside ;
Since paltry traders represent our isle

As mean in talent, as in moral vile.

What! shall the knave and blockhead dare to sit
Where Pitt and Sheridan once flash'd their wit?
There is an eloquence in Canning's eye,
And classic verdure in his rich reply—
A thoughtful vigour in perspicuous Peel;
But how can ragamuffins speak or feel,
That, job-inspired, to Stephen's mansion flock,
To make the Parliament a grand joint stock?
Big with M.P.' behold the mushroom race
Thrust in by bribes to fill a barter'd place;
To drizzle speeches, and like pug-dogs perk
In halls once hallow'd by the lips of Burke.
Look at the gang!

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When such a herd pollutes St. Stephen's fane,
What patriot mourns not for his country's stain?
Oh! might one hiss the motley forum fill, (!!
And drive each dunce to his deserted till.

JANUARY AND MAY.

Train'd by some venal, match-contriving jade,
In palsied arms what lovely maidens fade!

Like flowers transplanted to a sandy heath,
Where vapours wither, and pollutions breathe:
What eye can such a loathsome scene behold,
Nor curse the rottenness preserved in gold?
To marry wealth, what anguish will be borne?
A crooked log by night—a child by morn!
His parchment seal'd-the wife attends each whim,
Starts at his groan, and chafes his flannell'd limb;
Hangs round his knee, and whimpers at his wrath,
Secures his tucker, and spoons out his broth;
A vigil, down to periwig and cap,

She prays for death,—and sees it in his nap!

ANOTHER BRACE OF CHARACTERS.

Next, see the Rectors, whose ancestral worth,

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Secures a good fat' living, at their birth;

From college ripe, they chant the hunter's song,

Drink, chase, and shoot the wood's wild 'feather'd throng.'

Let the lean Curate, in his white-wash'd room,

Gulp the small beer, and preach the sinner's doom,—
With foggy throat three sermons growl a day,
And, thankful, feast on sixty pounds for pay !

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A WATER PROCESSION, YCLEPED SWAN-HOPPING.'
From vulgar scenes, behold a gilded change,
When paunchy shrieves enjoy their wat'ry range;
Now bells are crack'd! and fat the turtle flames-
For proudly sails the charlatan of Thames!
The sinking river sweats beneath its weight,
And bubbles anger at the capon'd freight;
While hungry idiots stare along the shore,
Sigh for the soup, or watch the dripping oar.

A PROCESSION OF GENTLEMEN OF THE LONG ROBE!

A tribe there is,-the tribe of every street,

That cheat unhang'd, yet help to hang the cheat!

A plague so direful Egypt never saw,一

The money-gulping vermin of the law:

See! where the dapper caitiffs bustling come,
Whose teeth-grip'd lips compress the mutter'd hum;
A savage grin plays on the sallow cheek,
Their knitting brows the augur'd pillage speak;
Beneath their hugging arms tied briefs repose,
And free behind, the ruby tape-string flows:
A cringing, tricky, overbearing host,

Whose law is quibble, and whose cheat's a boast.

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[ENTER THE CI-DEVANT RESPECTABLE' JOHN BULL AND FAMILY.]

Superbly see the trader's costly bale
Roll'd on the counter for patrician sale;
The brass-lined window, and Peruvian shows
Of silks for belles, and handkerchiefs for beaux-
All prove the spirit of commercial pride,

And shed a glory on the counter's side!
And then the master of this mighty place-
Oh! what a model of slim form and grace!
So prim and spruce—so civet-like and sweet,
Such taper fingers and such dainty feet!

He keeps a groom and blood,' and Sabbath chaise,
Olivia waltzes, and Amelia plays.

And then, he gives his ball, and swills his wine,

And deems it courtly not till eve to dine:

In short, no nabob more sublimely swells
Than this same connoisseur of yards and ells,
Till debt and ruin rouse the rascal's fears,
And George's white-wash blot the long arrears,

CHORUS TO THE ABOVE PERFORMANCE.

Pride is the monster-passion of the times,
The spring of folly, and the nurse of crimes;
Pride makes the black-leg swindle for his ore,
Pride makes the honest to be so no more;
Pride tempts the guilty to become more vile,
At once the curse and ruin of our Isle !

GRAND INTERLUDE, BETWEEN THE ACTS, ON MERCANTILE

SWINDLING.

Tune, TANTARARA ROGUES ALL.

Tremendous ones for coke, and silk, and steam*,
For starching bed-gowns and for skimming cream ;
For horseless coaches and potato flour,

For gin well poison'd, and for wine soon sour;

*Horne Tooke once said to one of that class of traders who are anxious to believe that authors must be visionary and unbusinesslike, and who, to disparage Tooke's authorship, boasted of his own common sense-that his (the boaster's) sense was very common indeed. So, it has been pleaded, that commercial men lost their senses during the bubble year. The pleaders are too adulatory; it must have been a very small minority, indeed, that had any senses to lose. The benevolence of parliamentary jobbers, in heaping up mockmountains of gold, was more obvious than their sense. Like that of the patriarch of bubble-mongers, much-injured Blunt,' their patriot purpose, doubtless, was to hasten the present respectable and profitable euthanasia of party;

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To buy both sides, and give their country peace.

I reflect, with pleasure, on having been allied with the Times and Herald, in various papers (town and provincial) then under my control, in unremitting exposure of the bubble-concoctors. The following leading article, written during the time I edited the Sheffield Iris, after the secession of Mr. James Montgomery, was copied into the Morning Herald.

Never was volume more instructive opened to the perusal of mankind, than the recent pages of our cotemporary experience, recounting the history of joint-stock companies-the frauds of their authors, and the infatuation of their dupes. The former were, in many instances, insolvents, whose desperate circumstances stimu lated their invention, and who often matured within the walls of a prison that "golden plan" which was destined, like the talisman of a wizard, to change the stone floor of a debtor's cell for a drawingroom with rich carpets, and substitute a splendid directorship for squalid captivity. The latter-their dupes-the covetous fools, who rushed blindly into the great gambling-house opened by knaves, under the lazy and absurd delusion of obtaining wealth without labour, and profit without industry, are equally blameable for encouraging, as the former for projecting. Neither our nobility, our bankers, nor our merchants are free from blame, in yielding to that torrent of avaricious cupidity, the fearful reflux of which is now inundating all classes with disaster. Have not some of our nobles sighed after the ores of the South American mountains, and gloated in voluptuous dreams of Sybarite imagination, over the glowing produce of silk-worms reared among the mists and bogs

Or schemes for golden mines,—as yet all clay,
For South Sea Islands-catch 'em if you may!
Of schemes so rational, who has not heard?
Some bought a whole, and some a modest third:
At once their avaricious eyes admire,

And Cent. per Cent. fans all their hearts on fire!—

But, sad surprise!-kind PETER paws the shares,

Each sawney hoots, and d—s, and puffs, and swears;
Then, like a sluice, the Company' disembogues,

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And proves the genuine stock—a stock of rogues!

ENTER A CI-DEVANT JEUNE HOMME, OR BATTERED DANDY.

Once king of rakes, LOTHARIO mopes forgot,
With gout, neglect, and ruin, for his lot!

No more the midnight haunt shall welcome him,
No more the light dance curve his shapely limb;
Nor Fashion's lean licentious crew attend
From noon to night, their dear, delightful friend :
Wrinkles and wasted wealth have banish'd all
Who prais'd his bottle, or adorn'd his ball!

A PSEUDO DANDY.

What titled Nabob he, that quizzes there,
With braided bosom and Macassar'd hair?

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of Ireland? Have not some of our bankers busied themselves in trcating sunbeams from cucumbers ?" Have not our merchants— once a name for integrity and honour-deeply involved themselves in the general corruption of delirious greediness, and, to use the words of an energetic writer," shewed their plague-spots, as if they were badges of distinction?" Have not, in short, lords and commoners, divines and lawyers, quakers and stock brokers, physicians and literati, all embarked promiscuously in the same shoreless sea of infatuation, in which he that invented the most brutally stupid, and most visionary commercial romance, (compared with which, Laputan speculation might shew like wisdom,) was deemed the most complete man of business; and he was pronounced most clever, who proved himself to be the greatest cheat. This comes of people not being content to go on in the plain old-fashioned Englishway of getting rich by regular industry. Hence the deterioration of the British merchant's character. Once his word was as good as his bond; but now, as a learned and witty counsel said in a shuffling case of Alderman A. spection.'

'no prudent man would take his bond without rigid in

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