The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque, Commonly called Colonel Jack

Wherever God erects a house of prayer,The Devil always builds a chapel there:11And 'twill be found upon examination,The latter has the largest congregation:For ever since he first debauched the mind,He made a perfect conquest of mankind.With uniformity of service, heReigns with a general aristocracy.No non-conforming sects disturb his reign,For of his yoke there's very few complain.He knows the genius and the inclination,And matches proper sins for every nation,He needs no standing-army government;He always rules us by our own consent:His laws are easy, and his gentle swayMakes it exceeding pleasant to obey:The list of his vicegerents and commanders,Outdoes your Cæsars or your Alexanders.They never fail of his infernal aid,And he's as certain ne'er to be betrayed.Through all the world they spread his vast command,And Death's eternal empire is maintained.They rule so politicly and so well,As if they were Lords Justices of Hell,Duly divided to debauch mankind,And plant infernal dictates in his mind.Pride, the first peer, and president of Hell,To his share Spain, the largest province, fell.The subtile Prince thought fittest to bestowOn these the golden mines of Mexico,With all the silver mountains of Peru,Wealth which would in wise hands the world undo:Because he knew their genius was such,Too lazy and too haughty to be rich.So proud a people, so above their fate,That if reduced to beg, they'll beg in state;Lavish of money to be counted brave,And proudly starve because they scorn to save.Never was nation in the world beforeSo very rich and yet so very poor.Lust chose the torrid zone of Italy,Where blood ferments in rapes and sodomy:Where swelling veins overflow with liquid streams,With heat impregnate from Vesuvian flames:Whose flowing sulphur forms infernal lakes,And human body of the soil partakes.Their nature ever burns with hot desires,Fanned with luxuriant air from subterranean fires;Here, undisturbed in floods of scalding lust,The Infernal King reigns with infernal gust.Drunkenness, the darling favourite of Hell,Chose Germany to rule; and rules so well,No subjects more obsequiously obey,None please so well or are so pleased as they.The cunning artist manages so well,He lets them bow to Heaven and drink to Hell.If but to wine and him they homage pay,He cares not to what deity they pray,What God they worship most, or in what way.Whether by Luther, Calvin, or by RomeThey sail for Heaven, by Wine he steers them home.Ungoverned Passion settled first in France,Where mankind lives in haste and thrives by chance;A dancing nation, fickle and untrue,Have oft undone themselves and others too;Prompt the infernal dictates to obey,And in Hell's favour none more great than they.The Pagan world he blindly leads away,And personally rules with arbitrary sway;The mask thrown off, plain Devil his title stands,And what elsewhere he tempts he there commands.There with full gust the ambition of his mindGoverns, as he of old in Heaven designed.Worshipped as God, his Paynim altars smoke,Embrued with blood of those that him invoke.The rest by Deputies he rules as well,And plants the distant colonies of Hell.By them his secret power he maintains,And binds the world in his infernal chains.By Zeal the Irish, and the Russ by FollyFury the Dane, the Swede by Melancholy;By stupid Ignorance the Muscovite;The Chinese by a child of Hell called WitWealth makes the Persian too effeminate,And Poverty the Tartars desperate;The Turks and Moors by Mah'met he subdues,And God has given him leave to rule the Jews.Rage rules the Portuguese and Fraud the Scotch,Revenge the Pole and Avarice the Dutch.Satire, be kind, and draw a silent veilThy native England's vices to conceal;Or, if that task's impossible to do,At least be just and show her virtues too-Too great the first; alas, the last too few!England, unknown as yet, unpeopled lay;Happy had she remained so to this day,And not to every nation been a prey.Her open harbours and her fertile plains(The merchant's glory those, and these the swain's)To every barbarous nation have betrayed her,Who conquer her as oft as they invade her;So beauty's guarded but by innocence,That ruins her, which should be her defence.Ingratitude, a devil of black renown,Possessed her very early for his own.An ugly, surly, sullen, selfish spirit,Who Satan's worst perfections does inherit;Second to him in malice and in force,All devil without, and all within him worse.He made her first-born race to be so rude,And suffered her so oft to be subdued;By several crowds of wandering thieves o'errun,Often unpeopled, and as oft undone;While every nation that her powers reducedTheir languages and manners introduced.From whose mixed relics our compounded breedBy spurious generation does succeed,Making a race uncertain and uneven,Derived from all the nations under Heaven.The Romans first with Julius Cæsar came,Including all the nations of that name,Gauls, Greeks, and Lombards, and, by computationAuxiliaries or slaves of every nation.With Hengist, Saxons; Danes with Sueno came,In search of plunder, not in search of fame.Scots, Picts, and Irish from the Hibernian shore,And conquering William brought the Normans o'er.All these their barbarous offspring left behind,The dregs of armies, they of all mankind;Blended with Britons, who before were here,Of whom the Welsh ha' blessed the character.From this amphibious ill-born mob beganThat vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman.The customs, surnames, languages, and mannersOf all these nations are their own explainers:Whose relics are so lasting and so strong,They ha' left a shibboleth upon our tongue,By which with easy search you may distinguishYour Roman-Saxon-Danish Norman English.The great invading Norman12 let us knowWhat conquerors in after times might do.To every musketeer13 he brought to town,He gave the lands which never were his own.When first the English crown he did obtain,He did not send his Dutchmen back again.No reassumptions in his reign were known,D'Avenant might there ha' let his book alone.No Parliament his army could disband;He raised no money, for he paid in land.He gave his legions their eternal station,And made them all freeholders of the nation.He cantoned out the country to his men,And every soldier was a denizen.The rascals thus enriched, he called them lords,To please their upstart pride with new-made words,And Doomsday Book his tyranny records.And here begins our ancient pedigree,That so exalts our poor nobility:'Tis that from some French trooper they derive,Who with the Norman bastard did arrive;The trophies of the families appear,Some show the sword, the bow, and some the spear,Which their great ancestor, forsooth, did wear.These in the herald's register remain,Their noble mean extraction to explain,Yet who the hero was, no man can tell,Whether a drummer or a colonel:The silent record blushes to revealTheir undescended dark original.But grant the best, how came the change to pass,A true-born Englishman of Norman race?A Turkish horse can show more historyTo prove his well-descended family.Conquest, as by the moderns14 'tis expressed,May give a title to the lands possessed:But that the longest sword should be so civilTo make a Frenchman English, that's the devil.These are the heroes that despise the Dutch,And rail at new-come foreigners so much,Forgetting that themselves are all derivedFrom the most scoundrel race that ever lived;A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones,Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns,The Pict and painted Briton, treacherous Scot,By hunger, /theft, and rapine hither brought;Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains,Who, joined with Norman-French, compound the breedFrom whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.And lest by length of time it be pretendedThe climate may this modern breed ha' mended,Wise Providence, to keep us where we are,Mixes us daily with exceeding care.We have been Europe's sink, the jakes where sheVoids all her offal outcast progeny.From the eighth Henry's time, the strolling bandsOf banished fugitives from neighbouring landsHave here a certain sanctuary found:The eternal refuge of the vagabond,Where, in but half a common age of time,Borrowing new blood and manners from the clime,Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn,And all their race are true-born Englishmen.Dutch, Walloons, Flemings, Irishmen, and Scots,Vaudois and Valtelins, and Hugonots,In good Queen Bess's charitable reign,Supplied us with three hundred thousand men.Religion-God, we thank Thee! – sent them hitherPriests, Protestants, the Devil and all together:Of all professions and of every trade,All that were persecuted or afraid;Whether for debt or other crimes they fled,David at Hachilah was still their head.The offspring of this miscellaneous crowdHad not their new plantations long enjoyed,But they grew Englishmen, and raised their votesAt foreign shoals for interloping Scots.The royal branch15 from Pictland did succeed,With troops of Scots and Scabs from North-by-Tweed.The seven first years of his pacific reignMade him and half his nation Englishmen.Scots from the northern frozen banks of Tay,With packs and plods came whigging all away:Thick as the locusts which in Egypt swarmed,With pride and hungry hopes completely armed;With native truth, diseases, and no money,Plundered our Canaan of the milk and honey.Here they grew quickly lords and gentlemen,And all their race are true-born Englishmen.The civil wars, the common purgative,Which always use to make the nation thrive,Made way for all that strolling congregationWhich thronged in Pious Charles's restoration.16The royal refugee our breed restores,With foreign courtiers and with foreign whores,And carefully repeopled us again,Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign,With such a blest and true-born English fry,As much illustrates our nobility.A gratitude which will so black appear,As future ages must abhor to hear,When they look back on all that crimson flood,Which streamed in Lindsay's and Carnarvon's blood,Bold Strafford, Cambridge, Capel, Lucas, Lisle,Who crowned in death his father's funeral pile.The loss of whom, in order to supply,With true-born English nationality,Six bastard Dukes survive his luscious reign,The labours of Italian Castlemaine,17French Portsmouth,18 Tabby Scot, and Cambrian.Besides the numerous bright and virgin throng,Whose female glories shade them from my song.This offspring, if one age they multiply,May half the house with English peers supply;There with true English pride they may contemnSchomberg and Portland,19 new made noblemen.French cooks, Scotch pedlars, and Italian whores,Were all made lords or lords' progenitors.Beggars and bastards by his new creationMuch multiplied the peerage of the nation;Who will be all, ere one short age runs o'er.As true-born lords as those we had before.Then to recruit the Commons he preparesAnd heal the latent breaches of the wars;The pious purpose better to advance,He invites the banished Protestants of France:Hither for God's sake and their own they fled,Some for religion came, and some for bread;Two hundred thousand pairs of wooden shoes,Who, God be thanked, had nothing left to lose,To Heaven's great praise did for religion fly,To make us starve our poor in charity.In every port they plant their fruitful train,To get a race of true-born Englishmen;Whose children will, when riper years they see,Be as ill-natured and as proud as we;Call themselves English, foreigners despise,Be surly like us all, and just as wise.Thus from a mixture of all kinds beganThat heterogeneous thing an Englishman;In eager rapes and furious lust begot,Betwixt a painted Briton and a Scot;Whose gendering offspring quickly learned to bow,And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough;From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,With neither name nor nation, speech nor fame;In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,Infused betwixt a Saxon and a Dane;While their rank daughters, to their parents just,Received all nations with promiscuous lust.This nauseous brood directly did containThe well-extracted brood of Englishmen.Which medley cantoned in a Heptarchy,A rhapsody of nations to supply,Among themselves maintained eternal wars,And still the ladies loved the conquerors.The Western Angles all the rest subdued,A bloody nation, barbarous and rude,Who by the tenure of the sword possessedOne part of Britain, and subdued the rest.And as great things denominate the small,The conquering part gave title to the whole;The Scot, Pict, Briton, Roman, Dane, submit,And with the English-Saxon all unite;And these the mixtures have so close pursued,The very name and memory's subdued.No Roman now, no Briton does remain;Wales strove to separate, but strove in vain;The silent nations undistinguished fall,And Englishman's the common name of all.Fate jumbled them together, God knows how;What e'er they were, they're true-born English now.The wonder which remains is at our pride,To value that which all men else deride.For Englishmen to boast of generationCancels their knowledge and lampoons the nation.A true-born Englishman's a contradiction,In speech an irony, in fact a fiction;A banter made to be a test to fools,Which those that use it justly ridicules;A metaphor invented to expressA man akin to all the universe.For, as the Scots, as learned men have said,Throughout the world their wandering seed have spread;So open-handed England, 'tis believed,Has all the gleanings of the world received.Some think of England, 'twas our Saviour meant,The Gospel should to all the world be sent,Since, when the blessed sound did hither reach,They to all nations might be said to preach.'Tis well that virtue gives nobility,How shall we else the want of birth and blood supply?Since scarce one family is left aliveWhich does not from some foreigner derive.Of sixty thousand English gentlemen,Whose name and arms in registers remain,We challenge all our heralds to declareTen families which English-Saxons are.France justly owns the ancient noble lineOf Bourbon, Montmorency, and Lorraine,The Germans too their House of Austria showAnd Holland their invincible Nassau,Lines which in heraldry were ancient grownBefore the name of Englishman was known.Even Scotland, too, her elder glory shows,Her Gordons, Hamiltons, and her Monros,Douglas, Mackays, and Grahams, names well knownLong before ancient England knew her own.But England, modern to the last degreeBorrows or makes her own nobility,And yet she boldly boasts of pedigree;Repines that foreigners are put upon her,And talks of her antiquity and honour;Her Sackvilles, Saviles, Capels, De la Meres,Mohuns, and Montagues, Darcys, and Veres,Not one have English names, yet all are English peers.Your Hermans, Papillons, and LavalliersPass now for true-born English knights and squires,And make good senate members or Lord Mayors.Wealth, howsoever got, in Ehgland makesLords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes:Antiquity and birth are needless here;'Tis impudence and money makes a peer.Innumerable City knights, we know,From Bluecoat Hospital and Bridewell flow;Draymen and porters fill the city ChairAnd footboys magisterial purple wear.Fate has but very small distinction setBetwixt the counter and the coronet.Tarpaulin lords, pages of high renown,Rise up by poor men's valour, not their own.Great families of yesterday we show,And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who.

PART II

The breed's described: Now, Satire, if you can,Their temper show, for manners make the man.Fierce, as the Briton; as the Roman, brave;And less inclined to conquer than to save;Eager to fight, and lavish of their blood,And equally of fear and forecast void.The Pict has made 'em sour, the Dane morose;False from the Scot, and from the Norman worse.What honesty they have, the Saxons gave them,And that, now they grow old, begins to leave them.The climate makes them terrible and bold,And English beef their courage does uphold;No danger can their daring spirit pall,Always provided that their belly's full.In close intrigues their faculty's but weak,For generally what e'er they know they speak,And often their own counsels undermineBy their infirmity, and not design;From whence the learned say it does proceed,That English treasons never can succeed;For they're so open-hearted, you may knowTheir own most secret thoughts, and others too.The lab'ring poor, in spite of double pay,Are saucy, mutinous, and beggarly,So lavish of their money and their time,That want of forecast is the nation's crime.Good drunken company is their delight,And what they get by day they spend by night.Dull thinking seldom does their heads engage,But drink their youth away, and hurry on old age.Empty of all good husbandry and sense,And void of manners most when void of pence,Their strong aversion to behaviour's such,They always talk too little or too much;So dull, they never take the pains to think,And seldom are good-natured, but in drink.In English ale their dear enjoyment lies,For which they'll starve themselves and families.An Englishman will fairly drink as muchAs will maintain two families of Dutch:Subjecting all their labour to their pots;The greatest artists are the greatest sots.The country poor do by example live;The gentry lead them, and the clergy drive:What may we not from such examples hope?The landlord is their god, the priest their pope.A drunken clergy and a swearing benchHas given the Reformation such a drench,As wise men think there is some cause to doubtWill purge good manners and religion out.Nor do the poor alone their liquor prize;The sages join in this great sacrifice;The learned men who study Aristotle,Correct him with an explanation bottle;Praise Epicurus rather than Lysander,And Aristippus20 more than Alexander.The doctors, too, their Galen here resign,And generally prescribe specific wine;The graduate's study's grown an easier task,While for the urinal they toss the flask;The surgeon's art grows plainer every hour,And wine's the balm which into wounds they pour.Poets long since Parnassus have forsaken,And say the ancient bards were all mistaken.Apollo's lately abdicate and fled,And good King Bacchus governs in his stead;He does the chaos of the head refine,And atom-thoughts jump into words by wine:The inspirations of a finer nature,As wine must needs excel Parnassus' water.Statesmen their weighty politics refine,And soldiers raise their courages by wine;Cecilia gives her choristers their choice,And lets them all drink wine to clear their voice.Some think the clergy first found out the way,And wine's the only spirit by which they pray;But others, less profane than so, agreeIt clears the lungs and helps the memory;And therefore all of them divinely think,Instead of study, 'tis as well to drink.And here I would be very glad to knowWhether our Asgilites may drink or no;Th' enlight'ning fumes of wine would certainlyAssist them much when they begin to fly;Or if a fiery chariot should appear,Inflamed by wine, they'd have the less to fear.Even the gods themselves, as mortals say,Were they on earth, would be as drunk as they;Nectar would be no more celestial drink,They'd all take wine, to teach them how to think.But English drunkards gods and men outdo,Drink their estates away, and money too.Colon's in debt, and if his friends should failTo help him out, must die at at last in gaol;His wealthy uncle sent a hundred noblesTo pay his trifles off, and rid him of his troubles;But Colon, like a true-born Englishman,Drank all the money out in bright champagne,And Colon does in custody remain.Drunk'ness has been the darling of this realmE'er since a drunken pilot had the helm.In their religion they are so uneven,That each man goes his own by-way to Heaven,Tenacious of mistakes to that degreeThat ev'ry man pursues it separately,And fancies none can find the way but he:So shy of one another they are grown,As if they strove to get to Heaven alone.Rigid and zealous, positive and grave,And ev'ry grace but Charity they have.This makes them so ill-natured and uncivil,That all men think an Englishman the devil.Surly to strangers, froward to their friend;Submit to love with a reluctant mind.Resolved to be ungrateful and unkind,If by necessity reduced to ask,The giver has the difficultest task;For what's bestowed they awkwardly receive,And always take less freely than they give.The obligation is their highest grief,And never love where they accept relief.So sullen in their sorrow, that 'tis knownThey'll rather die than their afflictions own;And if relieved, it is too often trueThat they'll abuse their benefactors too;For in distress, their haughty stomach's such,They hate to see themselves obliged too much.Seldom contented, often in the wrong,Hard to be pleased at all, and never long.If your mistakes their ill opinion gain,No merit can their favour reobtain;And if they're not vindictive in their fury,'Tis their unconstant temper does secure ye.Their brain's so cool, their passion seldom burns,For all's condensed before the flame returns;The fermentation's of so weak a matter,The humid damps the fume, and runs it all to water.So, though the inclination may be strong,They're pleased by fits, and never angry long.Then, if good-nature shows some slender proof,They never think they have reward enough,But, like our modern Quakers of the town,Expect your manners, and return you none.Friendship, th' abstracted union of the mind,Which all men seek, but very few can find:Of all the nations in the universe,None talk on't more, or understand it less;For if it does their property annoy,Their property their friendship will destroy.As you discourse them, you shall hear them tellAll things in which they think they do excel.No panegyric needs their praise record;An Englishman ne'er wants his own good word.His long discourses generally appearPrologued with his own wond'rous character.But first to illustrate his own good name,He never fails his neighbour to defame;And yet he really designs no wrong-His malice goes no further than his tongue.But pleased to tattle, he delights to rail,To satisfy the lech'ry of a tale.His own dear praises close the ample speech;Tells you how wise he is-that is, how rich:For wealth is wisdom; he that's rich is wise;And all men learned poverty despise.His generosity comes next, and thenConcludes that he's a true-born Englishman;And they, 'tis known, are generous and free,Forgetting and forgiving injury:Which may be true, thus rightly understood,Forgiving ill turns, and forgetting good.Cheerful in labour when they've undertook it,But out of humour when they're out of pocket.But if their belly and their pocket's full,They may be phlegmatic, but never dull:And if a bottle does their brains refine,It makes their wit as sparkling as their wine.As for the general vices which we findThey're guilty of, in common with mankind,Satire, forbear, and silently endure;We must conceal the crimes we cannot cure.Nor shall my verse the brighter sex defame,For English beauty will preserve her name,Beyond dispute, agreeable and fair,And modester than other nations are:For where the vice prevails, the great temptationIs want of money more than inclination.In general, this only is allowed,They're something noisy, and a little proud.An Englishman is gentlest in command,Obedience is a stranger in the land:Hardly subjected to the magistrate,For Englishmen do all subjection hate;Humblest when rich, but peevish when they're poor,And think, what e'er they have, they merit more.The meanest English ploughman studies law,And keeps thereby the magistrates in awe;Will boldly tell them what they have to do,And sometimes punish their omissions too.Their liberty and property's so dear,They scorn their laws or governors to fear:So bugbeared with the name of slavery,They can't submit to their own liberty.Restraint from ill is freedom to the wise;But Englishmen do all restraint despise.Slaves to their liquor, drudges to the pots,The mob are statesmen and their statesmen sots.Their governors they count such dangerous things,That 'tis their custom to affront their kings:So jealous of the power their kings possest,They suffer neither power nor king to rest.The bad with force they easily subdue:The good with constant clamours they pursue;And did King Jesus reign, they'd murmur too.A discontented nation, and by farHarder to rule in times of peace than war:Easily set together by the ears,And full of causeless jealousies and fears:Apt to revolt, and willing to rebel,And never are contented when they're well.No Government could ever please them long,Could tie their hands, or rectify their tongue:In this to ancient Israel well compared,Eternal murmurs are among them heard.It was but lately that they were oppressed,Their rights invaded, and their laws suppressed:When nicely tender of their liberty,Lord! what a noise they made of slavery.In daily tumult showed their discontent,Lampooned the King, and mocked his Government.And if in arms they did not first appear,'Twas want of force, and not for want of fear.In humbler tone than English used to do,At foreign hands for foreign aid they sue.William, the great successor of Nassau,Their prayers heard and their oppressions saw:He saw and saved them; God and him they praised,To this their thanks, to that their trophies raised.But, glutted with their own felicities,They soon their new deliverer despise;Say all their prayers back, their joy disown,Unsing their thanks, and pull their trophies down;Their harps of praise are on the willows hung,For Englishmen are ne'er contented long.The reverend clergy, too! Who would have thoughtThat they, who had such non-resistance taught,Should e'er to arms against their prince be brought,Who up to Heaven did regal power advance,Subjecting English laws to modes of France,Twisting religion so with loyalty,As one could never live and t'other die.And yet no sooner did their prince designTheir glebes and perquisites to undermine,But, all their passive doctrines laid aside,The clergy their own principles denied;Unpreached their non-resisting cant, and prayedTo Heaven for help and to the Dutch for aid.The Church chimed all her doctrines back again,And pulpit champions did the cause maintain;Flew in the face of all their former zeal,And non-resistance did at once repeal.The Rabbis say it would be too prolixTo tie religion up to politics:The Church's safety is suprema lex.And so, by a new figure of their own,Their former doctrines all at once disown;As laws post facto in the ParliamentIn urgent cases have obtained assent,But are as dangerous precedents laid by,Made lawful only by necessity.The reverend fathers then in arms appear,And men of God become the men of war.The nation, fired by them, to arms apply,Assault their Antichristian monarchy;To their due channel all our laws restore,And made things what they should have been before.But when they came to fill the vacant throne,And the pale priests looked back on what they'd done;How English liberty began to thrive,And Church of England loyalty outlive;How all their persecuting days were done,And their deliverer placed upon the throne:The priests, as priests are wont to do, turned tail;They're Englishmen, and nature will prevail.Now they deplore the ruins they have made,And murmur for the master they betrayed,Excuse those crimes they could not make him mend,And suffer for the cause they can't defend.Pretend they'd not have carried things so high,And proto-martyrs make for Popery.Had the prince done as they designed the thing,Have set the clergy up to rule the King,Taken a donative for coming hither,And so have left their King and them together,We had, say they, been now a happy nation.No doubt we had seen a blessed reformation:For wise men say 'tis as dangerous a thing,A ruling priesthood as a priest-rid king;And of all plagues with which mankind are curst,Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst.If all our former grievances were feigned,King James has been abused and we trepanned;Bugbeared with Popery and power despotic,Tyrannic government and leagues exotic:The Revolution's a fanatic plot,William a tyrant, Sunderland a sot:A factious army and a poisoned nationUnjustly forced King James's abdication.But if he did the subjects' rights invade,Then he was punished only, not betrayed;And punishing of kings is no such crime,But Englishmen have done it many a time.When kings the sword of justice first lay down,They are no kings, though they possess the crown:Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things:The good of subjects is the end of kings;To guide in war and to protect in peace;Where tyrants once commence the kings do cease;For arbitrary power's so strange a thing,It makes the tyrant and unmakes the king.If kings by foreign priests and armies reign,And lawless power against their oaths maintain,Then subjects must have reason to complain.If oaths must bind us when our kings do ill,To call in foreign aid is to rebel.By force to circumscribe our lawful princeIs wilful treason in the largest sense;And they who once rebel, most certainlyTheir God, and king, and former oaths defy.If we allow no maladministrationCould cancel the allegiance of the nation,Let all our learned sons of Levi tryThis ecclesiastic riddle to untie:How they could make a step to call the prince,And yet pretend to oaths and innocence?By the first address they made beyond the seas,They're perjured in the most intense degrees;And without scruple for the time to comeMay swear to all the kings in Christendom.And truly did our kings consider all,They'd never let the clergy swear at all;Their politic allegiance they'd refuse,For whores and priests do never want excuse.But if the mutual contract were dissolved,The doubts explained, the difficulties solved,That kings, when they descend to tyranny,Dissolve the bond and leave the subject free,The government's ungirt when justice dies,And constitutions are non-entities;The nation's all a mob; there's no such thingAs Lords or Commons, Parliament or King.A great promiscuous crowd the hydra liesTill laws revive and mutual contract ties;A chaos free to choose for their own shareWhat case of government they please to wear.If to a king they do the reins commit,All men are bound in conscience to submit;But then that king must by his oath assentTo postulatus of the government,Which if he breaks, he cuts off the entail,And power retreats to its original.This doctrine has the sanction of assentFrom Nature's universal Parliament.The voice of Nature and the course of thingsAllow that laws superior are to kings.None but delinquents would have justice cease;Knaves rail at laws as soldiers rail at peace;For justice is the end of government,As reason is the test of argument.No man was ever yet so void of senseAs to debate the right of self-defence,A principle so grafted in the mind,With Nature born, and does like Nature bind;Twisted with reason and with Nature too,As neither one or other can undo.Nor can this right be less when national;Reason, which governs one, should govern all.Whatever the dialects of courts may tell,He that his right demands can ne'er rebel,Which right, if 'tis by governors denied,May be procured by force or foreign aid;For tyranny's a nation's term of grief,As folks cry "Fire" to hasten in relief;And when the hated word is heard about,All men should come to help the people out.Thus England groaned-Britannia's voice was heard,And great Nassau to rescue her appeared,Called by the universal voice of Fate-God and the people's legal magistrate.Ye Heavens regard! Almighty Jove look down,And view thy injured monarch on the throne.On their ungrateful heads due vengeance take,Who sought his aid and then his part forsake.Witness, ye Powers! It was our call alone,Which now our pride makes us ashamed to own.Britannia's troubles fetched him from afarTo court the dreadful casualties of war;But where requital never can be made,Acknowledgment's a tribute seldom paid.He dwelt in bright Maria's circling arms,Defended by the magic of her charmsFrom foreign fears and from domestic harms.Ambition found no fuel to her fire;He had what God could give or man desire.Till pity roused him from his soft repose,His life to unseen hazards to expose;Till pity moved him in our cause t'appear;Pity! that word which now we hate to hear.But English gratitude is always such,To hate the hand which doth oblige too much.Britannia's cries gave birth to his intent,And hardly gained his unforeseen assent;His boding thoughts foretold him he should findThe people fickle, selfish, and unkind.Which thought did to his royal heart appearMore dreadful than the dangers of the war;For nothing grates a generous mind so soonAs base returns for hearty service done.Satire, be silent! awfully prepareBritannia's song and William's praise to hear.Stand by, and let her cheerfully rehearseHer grateful vows in her immortal verse.Loud Fame's eternal trumpet let her sound;Listen, ye distant Poles and endless round.May the strong blast the welcome news conveyAs far as sound can reach or spirit can fly.To neighb'ring worlds, if such there be, relateOur hero's fame, for theirs to imitate.To distant worlds of spirits let her rehearse:For spirits, without the help of voice, converse.May angels hear the gladsome news on high,Mixed with their everlasting symphony.And Hell itself stand in suspense to knowWhether it be the fatal blast or no.