Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks
The world was made in vain, if not for him.
Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born
To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears,
And fweating 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 eafy reckoning; and they think the fame.
Thus kings were firft invented, and thus kings
Were burnished into heroes, and became
The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp;

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 fubjects more mysterious, they were yet
Babes in the caufe of freedom, and should fear
And quake before the gods themselves had made:
But above measure strange, 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 philosophic deeds
Familiar, ferve to emancipate the reft!
Such dupes are men to cuftom, and so prone:
To reverence what is ancient, and can pleadi
A courfe of long obfervance 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 shock
Of rational difcuffion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom luft
And folly in as ample measure meet,
As in the bofoms of the flaves he rules,
Should be a despot 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 sustained,
And force the beggarly laft 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 less prudence than of old
Jotham afcribed to his affembled trees

In politic convention) put your trust

In the fhadow 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 felf-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 ferve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free:
But recollecting still 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 fill;
May exercise amiss his proper powers,
Or covet more than freemen choose to grant:
Beyond that mark is treason. He is our's
To adminifter, 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 love
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 regardlefs 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 reason, is judicious, manly, free;

Your's, a blind inftin&t, 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 superior, he is never free.

Who lives, and is not weary of a life
Exposed to manacles, deserves them well.

The ftate, that ftrives for liberty, though foiled,
And forced to abandon what she bravely fought,
Deferves at least applause for her attempt,
And pity for her lofs. But that's a cause
Not often unfuccefsful: power ufurped

Is weakness when oppofed; 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 seek *,

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 Baftile.
Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts;
Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair,

That monarchs have fupplied from age to age
With mufic, fuch as fuits their fovereign ears,
The fighs and groans of miferable men!
There's not an English heart, that would not leap
To hear that ye were fallen at laft; to know
That ev❜n our enemies, fo oft employed

In forging chains for us, themselves were free.

*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 fuch fentiments as no better than empty declamation; but it is an ill fymptom, and peculiar to modern times.