It now an artifice doth grow,
Wrongs and outrages they do,
Lest men should think we owe.
The Introduction.
Speak, Satire, for there’s none can tell like thee,
Whether ’tis folly, pride, or knavery,
That makes this discontented land appear
Less happy now in times of peace, than war:
Why civil feuds disturb the nation more,
Than all our bloody wars have done before.
Fools out of favour grudge at knaves in place,
And men are always honest in disgrace:
The court preferments make men knaves in course:
But they which wou’d be in them wou’d be worse.
’Tis not at foreigners that we repine,
Wou’d foreigners their perquisites resign:
The grand contention’s plainly to be seen,
To get some men put out, and some put in.
For this our Senators make long harangues.
And florid Ministers whet their polish’d tongues.
Statesmen are always sick of one disease;
And a good pension gives them present ease.
That’s the specific makes them all content
With any King and any government.
Good patriots at court abuses rail,
And all the nation’s grievances bewail:
But when the sov’reign balsam’s once apply’d,
The zealot never fails to change his side;
And when he must the golden key resign,
The railing spirit comes about again.
Who shall this bubbl’d nation disabuse,
While they their own felicities refuse?
Who at the wars have made such mighty pother,
And now are falling out with one another:
With needless fears the jealous nations fill,
And always have been sav’d against their will:
Who fifty millions sterling have disburs’d
To be with peace, and too much plenty, curs’d;
Who their old monarch eagerly undo,
And yet uneasily obey the new.
Search, Satire, search; a deep incision make:
The poison’s strong, the antidote’s too weak.
’Tis pointed truth must manage this dispute,
And down-right English, Englishmen confute.
Whet thy just anger at the nation’s pride;
And with keen phrase repel the vicious tide,
To Englishmen their own beginnings show,
And ask them, why they slight their neighbours so:
Go back to elder times, and ages past,
And nations into long oblivion cast;
To elder Britain’s youthful days retire,
And there for true-born Englishmen inquire,
Britannia freely will disown the name,
And hardly knows herself from whence they came;
Wonders that they of all men should pretend
To birth, and blood, and for a name contend.
Go back to causes where our follies dwell,
And fetch the dark original from hell:
Speak, Satire, for there’s none like thee can tell.
Part I.
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there:
And ’twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation:
For ever since he first debauch’d the mind,
He made a perfect conquest of mankind.
With uniformity of service, he
Reigns with 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 ev’ry nation.
He needs no standing army government;
He always rules us by our own consent:
His laws are easy, and his gentle sway
Makes it exceeding pleasant to obey.
The list of his vicegerents and commanders,
Out-does your Cæsars, or your Alexanders.
They never fail of his infernal aid,
And he’s as certain ne’er to be betray’d.
Thro’ all the world they spread his vast command,
And death’s eternal empire is maintain’d.
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 subtle Prince thought fittest to bestow
On these the golden mines of Mexico,
With all the silver mountains of Peru;
Wealth which in wise hands would 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 before,
So very rich, and yet so very poor.
Lust chose the torrid zone of Italy,
Where blood ferments in rapes and sodomy:
Where swelling veins o’erflow with living streams,
With heat impregnate from Vesuvian flames;
Whose flowing sulphur forms infernal lakes,
And human body of the soil partakes.
There nature ever burns with hot desires,
Fann’d with luxuriant air from subterranean fires:
Here undisturbed, in floods of scalding lust,
Th’ infernal king reigns with infernal gust.
Drunkenness,