_To_ place and power all public spirit tends,
_In_ place and power all public spirit ends;
Like hardy plants that love the air and sky,
When _out_, 'twill thrive--but taken _in_, 'twill die!
Not bolder truths of sacred Freedom hung
From Sidney's pen or burned on Fox's tongue,
Than upstart Whigs produce each market-night,
While yet their conscience, as their purse, is light;
While debts at home excite their care for those
Which, dire to tell, their much-loved country owes,
And loud and upright, till their prize be known,
They thwart the King's supplies to raise their own.
But bees on flowers alighting cease their hum--
So, settling upon places, Whigs grow dumb.
And, tho' most base is he who, 'neath the shade
Of Freedom's ensign plies corruption's trade,
And makes the sacred flag he dares to show
His passport to the market of her foe,
Yet, yet, I own, so venerably dear
Are Freedom's grave old anthems to my ear,
That I enjoy them, tho' by traitors sung,
And reverence Scripture even from Satan's tongue.
Nay, when the constitution has expired,
I'll have such men, like Irish wakers, hired
To chant old "_Habeas Corpus_" by its side,
And ask in purchased ditties why it died?
See yon smooth lord whom nature's plastic pains
Would seem to've fashioned for those Eastern reigns
When eunuchs flourisht, and such nerveless things
As men rejected were the chosen of kings;--[12]
Even _he_, forsooth, (oh fraud, of all the worst!)
Dared to assume the patriot's name at first--
Thus Pitt began, and thus begin his apes;
Thus devils when _first_ raised take pleasing shapes.
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