Now heav'n its issues never brings
Without the means, and these are kings;
And he who blames when they announce ills,
Would counteract th' eternal counsels.
As when the Jews, a murm'ring race,
By constant grumblings fell from grace,
Heav'n taught them first to know their distance,
By famine, slavery and Philistines;
When these could no repentance bring,
In wrath it sent them last a king:
So nineteen, 'tis believ'd, in twenty
Of modern kings for plagues are sent you;
Nor can your cavillers pretend
But that they answer well their end.
'Tis yours to yield to their command,
As rods in Providence's hand;
For when it means to send you pain,
You toss your foreheads up in vain ;
Your way is, hush'd in peace, to bear it,
And make necessity a merit.
Hence sure perdition must await
The man, who rises 'gainst the State,
Who meets at once the damning sentence,
Without one loophole for repentance;
Ev'n though he gain the Royal See,
And rank among the Powers that be.
For hell is theirs, the scripture shows,
Whoe'er the Powers that be oppose;
And all those Powers (I'm clear that 'tis so)
Are damn'd for ever, ex officio.
"Thus far our Clergy: but 'tis true
We lack'd not earthly reas'ners too.
Had I the Poet's* brazen lungs,
As soundboard to his hundred tongues,
I could not half the scribblers muster,
That swarm'd round Rivington* in cluster;
Assemblies, Councilmen, forsooth,
Brush, Cowper, Wilkins, Chandler, Booth:
Yet all their arguments and sapience
You did not value at three halfpence.
Did not our Massachusettensis*
conviction strain his senses;
Rivington, printer of the Royal Gazette in New-York.The Legislature of that Province were opposed to the measures of the country.
A course of Essays under that signature was published in
Scrawl every moment he could spare
From cards and barbers and the fair;
Show, clear as sun in noonday heavens,
You did not feel a single grievance ;
Demonstrate all your opposition
Sprung from the eggs of foul Sedition ;
Swear he had seen the nest she laid in,
And knew how long she had been sitting;
Could tell exact what strength of heat is
Required to hatch her out Committees;
What shapes they take, and how much longer's
The time before they grow t' a Congress?
He white-wash'd Hutchinson, and varnish'd
Our Gage, who'd got a little tarnish'd ;
Boston, in the latter part of 1774 and beginning of 1775. It was the last combined effort of Tory wit and argument to write down the Revolution.
* "Committees of correspondence are the foulest and most venomous serpent, that ever issued from the eggs of Sedition," &c. Massachusettensis.
The scheme of appointing such committees in every town was first devised by the celebrated Samuel Adams; they became a most powerful engine for combining the sentiments and directing the energies of the people.
Made them new masks, in time no doubt,
For Hutchinson's was quite worn out:
Yet while he muddled all his head,
You did not heed a word he said.
"Did not our grave Judge Sewall* hit
The summit of newspaper wit;
Fill every leaf of every paper
Of Mills & Hicks, and mother Drapert;
Draw proclamations, works of toil,
In true sublime of scarecrow style,
Write farces too 'gainst sons of freedom,
All for your good, and none would read 'em ;
Denounce damnation on their frenzy,
Who died in Whig-impenitency;
Affirm that heav'n would lend us aid,
As all our Tory writers said;
And calculate so well its kindness,
He told the moment when it join'd us?
* Judge of Admiralty and Attorney-General of Massachusetts, Gage's chief adviser and proclamation-maker, author of a farce, called "The American roused," and of a multitude of news-paper essays.
+ Printers of ministerial gazettes in Boston.
""Twas then belike," Honorius cried,
"When you the public fast defied,
Refused to heaven to raise a prayer,
Because you'd no connections there;
And since with reverent hearts and faces,
To Governors you'd paid addresses,
In them, who made you Tories, seeing
You lived and moved and had your being,
Your humble vows you would not breathe
To powers, you'd no acquaintance with.
"As for your fasts," replied our 'Squire,
"What circumstance could fasts require?
We kept them not, but 'twas no crime,
We held them merely loss of time.
For what advantage firm and lasting,
Pray, did you ever get by fasting,
Or what the gain, that can arise
From vows and offerings to the skies?
Will heaven reward with posts and fees,
Or send us tea,* as consignees,
Alluding to the famous cargo of tea, which was destroyed in Boston harbor, the consignees of which were the tools of the British ministry.
|