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5.

If there were some sland'rous tool of state—
Some taunting, dull unmanner'd deputy-
Some district despot prompt to play the Tarquin,
And make his power the pander to his lust.

6.

But shall I reverence pride, and lust, and rapine?
No. When oppression stains the robe of state,
And power's a whip of scorpions in the hands
Of heartless knaves, to lash the o'erburthen'd back
Of honest industry, the loyal blood

Will turn to bitterest gall, and th' o'ercharged heart
Explode in execration.

7.

With all a soldier's prejudice to priests.

8.

But must we shake his chains,

And make them rattle in his recreant ears,
The slave is roused in vain.

9.

Now,

Our private injuries yield to public wrong,

The avenging sword; we strike but for our country!

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No, no, whate'er the colour of his creed,
The man of honour's orthodox.

What a flagrant attack on our holy religion!

12.

Our country's wrongs unite us.

13.

Will ripen to resistance-long oppression
Will prompt the dullest actor in his part.

14.

When Roman crimes prevail, methinks 'twere well,
Should Roman virtue still be found to punish them.
May every Tarquin meet a Brutus still,

And every tyrant feel one!

15.

Before what bar

Shall hapless wretches cite the power that grinds
And crushes them to earth? O! no, no, no!
When tyrants trample on all rights and duties,
And law becomes the accomplice of oppression,
There is but one appeal.-

16.

What is 't because I live and breathe at large-
Can eat, drink, sleep, and move unmanacled,
That I should calmly view my country's wrongs?
For what are we styled noble, and endowed
With pomp and privilege?

17.

For what, thus raised above our fellow-creatures,
And fed like gods on incense, but to shew

Superior worth-pre-eminence of virtue !

To guard with holy zeal the people's rights,
And stand firm bulwarks 'gainst the tide of power,
When rushing to o'erwhelm them.

18.

'Tis not rebellion to resist oppression;

'Tis virtue to avenge our country's wrongs,
And self-defence to strike at an usurper.

Horrible political blasphemy, Mr. George Colman the younger!

19.

Had fear, or feeling sway'd against redress
Of public wrong, man never had been free;
The thrones of tyrants had been fix'd as fate,
And slavery seal'd the universal doom.

20.

Each patriot hand may grasp a goodly sword,
And try its temper on our country's tyrants.

The erasures amount to twenty-nine in all, but the foregoing are a fair, full, and ample specimen of the most atrocious of them.

Such are the sentiments to be withheld from the stage, according to the new licenser of plays! Such are the heinous doctrines which an author in a free country has dared to repeat, after the example of his predecessors in an enlightened age-at " this time" too, when there are such mysterious reasons for their suppression. We advise Mr. George Colman the younger, if he be inclined to continue his opposition to common sense, to outrage again popular opinion, to try his strength a second time against the knowledge and information of the country, to labour once more, as far as his means will allow, to obscure and even blot out entirely those sentiments that excite the noblest and most chivalrous feelings, to pause ere he proceed. Let him reflect, that what he imagines a reform is a vile abuse of power; that his kou-tou prostration before the graven image of despotism, so dazzling his frail faculties, may fit him very accommodatingly in his character of courtier, because the world cares nothing whether Mr. George Colman the younger knock his forehead against the palace-floor of its "celestial empire" nine or nine thousand times; it may also suit the Holy Alliance, by whose maxims it has been squared, but it will not do in Great Britain, on the part of one who ought to be an impartial arbitrator in his station in what belongs to our most valued and instructive amusements. If he persist in his ill-judged career, he will richly merit disgrace, and, we will venture to affirm, will be burthened with no small portion of it. In that case, every dramatic author who feels a proper pride, who is worthy our high literature, uniting principle and talent, will scorn to write for a stage so degraded as that of England will be, and its decline must inevitably follow. For our own parts we should little think we had fulfilled our duty to our fellow-subjects and to the interests of the drama -we should feel a great deficiency of gratitude for the support we receive, did we not animadvert thus severely, but justly, upon the most extraordinary and unnecessary exertion of Anti-British officiousness in a licenser which has ever happened. Thank God, the press is free; and when such ill-judged and unprovoked outrages are committed without shadow of an excuse, it will unite all who wield the pen of every political party (as it has done in the present instance) in the loudest repro

bation of the act. It will do more; it will, we will not say, shame the spirit that can so insult public feeling,—that may not be possible,-but it will brand it with lasting obloquy. Let the licenser beard the united opinion of the country if he choose, by persisting in his present course let him go on into "second childhood's night" and drag the stage after him into obscurity; his conduct shall not sleep with him in forgetfulness, but, like that of the Ephesian incendiary, be "damned to everlasting fame," for the singularity and flagitiousness of his offences. Y. I.

THE PIRATES' SONG.

UNMOOR Our bark upon the wave-
The wave, our vessel's home;
And we will steer her stiff and brave,
Far in the salt sea-foam.

Unmoor our bark upon the wave

Come, steady hearts and bold!
All eager the dull land to leave,
Her lofty prow behold :—

Her lofty prow that shall defy
The tempest and the shore,
And bear us far as winds can fly,
Wild in the Atlantic's roar-

To hail the yellow Chinese man,
Or Afric's sable race,
The Moor or tawny Indian,
Or give the merchant chace.

We are a band of iron souls

No fear can ever tame;

We'll bear our deeds to both the Poles,

In thunder and in flame.

We'll crest the white waves gallantly,

That rage and hiss below:

Comrades, huzza! we 're free-we're free-
We own no master now!

Unmoor and sail, the breeze is full,
The skies are clear and bright,
We're free-we 're free as yon sea-gull,
That scuds through floods of light.

Her anchor's up, her head is round,
There's a ripple at her bow,
Her sails fill fast, no mooring ground
Restrains her courage now.

Huzza! she sweeps her gallant way,

Cheer, comrades, at my call!—

The wide world is our enemy,
But we will dare it all!

THE UPSTARTS.

"Upstart a churl, and gather'd good,

And thence did spring your gentle blood."-Old Proverb.

IF there are few men whose conduct is uniform in all particulars, there are none whose opinions are not frequently in contradiction with each other. So prone, indeed, is poor humanity to see the same thing differently, according to the different points of view in which it may be placed, that the experience of a long life rarely suffices to put us in possession of the thoughts of our most intimate friends, or enables us to predict with certainty how they will act upon any new contingence. Yet we all are given to pride ourselves in no trifling degree on our consistency, and hold it the bitterest reproach, when we detect a self-contradiction in the sentiments and behaviour of those with whom we deal. To be inconsistent, is to reason ill;-to reason ill, is to be a blockhead; -and to be a blockhead, is worse than to be a knave:—a miserable Sorites! There is nothing, however, which we essay-writers delight in more than this weakness in human nature. To catch "my gentle public" at a fault, and to detect our fellow-countrymen in the commission of a good practical bull, is at once the business and the pleasure of our lives. An incongruity in "the most thinking people" is "the meat we most delight to feed upon;" it is the fruitful occasion of "our quips and our quiddities," the prolific parent of our wit and our wisdom, of our good jokes and our good sermons; in so much that, without the assistance of a competent diffusion of vice and folly, the editor of a magazine might shut up his study; for his "correspondents" would be worse off than a gravedigger without a doctor-a barrister without an attorney-or a theatrical manager without a manufacturer of melodrames. An essaywriter peers about in the twilight of opinion for ridicules, as an owl does “entre chien et loup" for rats and mice; and both alike are fain to go to bed without their supper, when there is a scarcity of the "small deer" by which they respectively live. Fortunately for you, reader, and for myself, the literary manor is not yet quite exhausted; and there is much reasonable probability that we may jog on together to a good old age,-I, in shewing up your absurdities, and you, in attributing them to your neighbour, to our great mutual satisfaction, and to the furtherance of those "gigantic efforts of the periodical press," which seem to indicate that the whole labour of the community is performed by steamengines, and that the entire population have nothing on earth to do, but to eat, drink, sleep, and-read reviews, magazines, and Scotch novels.

Of all the instances in illustration of a position to be defended, that which is actually cited is of course the most striking. To begin, therefore, with—“There is nothing in the world so this, or that, or the other"-is a good beginning, and available on every occasion. In conformity with this golden rule, I must say, then, that there is "no greater" absurdity, no wider self-disagreement" going," than that which is implied in the generally received prejudices against upstarts—a race of people most unmercifully and unreasonably vilipended. The very aristocratic pride in which these prejudices arise, is itself founded on he thing it derides. The first founders of the oldest families were uptarts; and as long as the cart shall yield precedence to the horse, so long

in the nature of things upstarts should have honour, for the sake of their descendants, who in the fulness of time must ripen into ancient gentlemen, if not into “most noble and puissant princes." Might I, Sir, therefore, take the liberty of asking you whether you are quite right in that curl of the nose, and that sidelong toss of the head, with which you regard the barouche and four that daily passes your window, bearing on its ample cushions your neighbour the great tallow-chandler, and his family, his wife as fat, his girls as pale, and his boys as wick-ed as his own dips? Are you convinced that it is perfectly (I do not say Christian, but) reasonable to be so offended at the spectacle of your old friend Tom Pigtail, of the "Mull and Highlander," riding to court as sheriff in a snuff-coloured suit-and the "ladies" of his family getting up in the world, from the gallery at the theatre (what a strange catachresis) to the side boxes? Are you not daily and hourly boring your own little ones with the advantages of industry, and telling your 'prentices to be sober and steady that they may live to be Lord Mayors? You crow over the French on account of the superiority of British commerce, and laugh at their exposure at the Louvre; and you boast that the shopkeepers of England beat Napoleon out of the field;—and yet you abuse upstarts! For what, in the name of Heaven, should a man leave his warm bed on a cold frosty morning, to open shop, if it be not for the pleasure of becoming one day an upstart? if the desire of being an upstart were not a prevalent virtue among Englishmen, who, Madam, would pay you the dividends on your stock? and who, Sir, would pay your pension; or give you, my Lord, such a handsome rent for your farm? Truly an upstart has his uses; and I charge you, reader, for the future, on pain of being branded with inconsistency, to treat them with all reasonable civility. I admit that the wood-embosomed manorhouse has, time out of mind, been occupied by your family, and that none of your ancestors, in the memory of man, have earned their own bread; it is no less true that not a stone of yonder bare house (which stands, with its Wyatt windows and painted verandahs, shining amidst half-a-dozen lanky and ill-thriven poplars) was quarried three years ago, when its present occupant was standing up to his elbows in a sugarhogshead. But what of that?"Le robbe fanno il primo sangue," as I have already said, and it may be doubted, (especially if you are of the true Norman race,) whether your own blood sprang from as honest a source as your retired, though not perhaps too retiring, neighbour. As, therefore, you reverence your own gentility, respect the upstart; put forth your hand in amity to the new comer, and give him a lift up the stick by your countenance, at the next county assembly. But you cannot bear, you tell me, to see his "vulgar lumps" of daughters figuring there with jewels that would purchase half your estate. Have you, then, no pride in the look, motion, and dress of your own girls, which no wealth can purchase? The new house, moreover, you reply, stands upon ground that was once your own; and you cannot like the man who has got your land. This, I grant, is vexatious; but surely it would be more so, if there was no one disposed to take that land in exchange for the money which you may prefer to the possession of your dirty acres. The proper business of a thorough gentleman being to squander, he would be utterly marred, without his correlative, the man that

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