Murmured this pious baptism:-"Be thou called The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine :
That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,
Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks
To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.
Let all, baptized by thy infernal dew,
Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!
No name left out which orthodoxy loves,
Court Journal or legitimate Review!—
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, love
Of other wives and husbands than their own—
The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!
Wither they to a ghastly caricature
Of what was human!-let not man nor beast
Behold their face with unaverted eyes,
Or hear their names with ears that tingle not
With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!”
This is a perilous liquor, good my lords.
[SWELLFOOT approaches to touch the GREEN BAG. Beware! for God's sake, beware!—if you should break
The seal, and touch the fatal liquor
Give it to me. I have been use to handle
All sorts of poisons. His dread majesty
Only desires to see the colour of it.
Now, with a little common sense, my lords,
Only undoing all that has been done,
(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it,)
Our victory is assured. We must entice
Her majesty from the sty, and make the pigs
Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG
Are the true test of guilt or innocence :
And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her
To manifest deformity like guilt:
If innocent, she will become transfigured
Into an angel, such as they say she is ;
And they will see her flying through the air,
So bright that she will dim the noon-day sun;
Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.
This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing
Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them
Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,
With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail
Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps
Of one another's ears between their teeth,
To catch the coming hail of comfits in.
You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,
Make them a solemn speech to this effect;
go to put in readiness the feast
Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,
Where, for more glory, let the ceremony
Take place of the uglification of the Queen.
I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience,
Humbly remind your majesty that the care your high office, as man-milliner
To red Bellona, should not be deferred.
All part, in happier plight to meet again.
The Boars in full Assembly.
Grant me your patience, gentlemen and boars,
Ye, by whose patience under public burthens
The glorious constitution of these sties
Subsists, and shall subsist. The lean pig-rates
Grow with the growing populace of swine;
The taxes, that true source of piggishness,
(How can I find a more appropriate term
To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,
And all that fit Boeotia as a nation
To teach the other nations how to live?)
Increase with piggishness itself; and still
Does the revenue, that great spring of all
The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,
Which free-born pigs regard with jealous eyes,
Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps,
All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,
And the revenue will amount to nothing!
The failure of a foreign market for
Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,
And such home manufactures, is but partial;
And, that the population of the pigs,
Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw
And water, is a fact which is—you know—
That is—it is a state necessity,
Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn
The settled Swellfoot system, or to make
Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions
Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipt
Into a loyal and an orthodox whine.
Things being in this happy state, the Queen
Iona-
A loud cry from the Pigs.
She is innocent, most innocent!
That is the very thing that I was saying,
Gentlemen swine; the Queen Iona being
Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes,
And the lean sows and boars collect about her,
Wishing to make her think that we believe
(I mean those more substantial pigs, who swill
Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw,)
That she is guilty; thus, the lean-pig faction
Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been
Your immemorial right, and which I will
Maintain you in to the last drop of-
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