Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

his own expence. This may be economy; but it is of that foolish sort proverbially denominated penny wise and pound foolish. Buonaparté knows this well.

His secret service-money is expended on men capable, and who dare not neglect to fulfil his orders, which are to blacken us in every court in Europe, and throughout America; it is never squandered on rotten boroughmongers, contractors, agents, with their useless hordes of relatives, bastards, parasites, dependants, mistresses, valets, &c. &c. He does, indeed, expend some money on operagirls; but then he sends them to amuse the emperor of Russia, or condescendingly permits them to emigrate to England, whither they are generally accompanied by their chers amis, who are often his agents!!! There are, at this moment, some of them in this country, who confessedly receive salaries from him, not indeed as espions, but, à couvert, as notes of admiration of their musical abilities. These people, although commonly the dregs of their own country, are received into the

first families in this with open arms; extract all secrets, of public as well as private concerns, in return for a song; and-make Buonaparté laugh!!

THEY MANAGE THIS BETTER IN FRANCE!

It is only by looking at home that we can afford to be generous abroad. Not all the wealth or power of Great Britain can regenerate the Continent; a change in the principles of their governments can only effect that desideratum. Here's how.

THE KING, SHEPHERD, AND CUR.

KINGS from the people spring, not they from kings, The heads these are, and those the underlings; But for the good of those, these called to sway, Those for their good alone submit t'obey. Hence kings are guardians of the public weal, Bound to pursue it with their utmost zeal. Who deem their pleasures are their sole concern, This fable suits-so, let them read, and learn.

BEHRAM, a Persian king who thought his throne Not for his subjects rais'd, but self alone, In indolence repos'd with regal glare, And left his people to his vizier's care. The end was natural-where masters sleep, The stewards fatten, and the tenants weep. Relying on the monarch's love of ease, The vizier only sought himself to please; Relations, friends, and parasites he fed, Ne'er once regarding how the people bled. Corruption was the order of the day, The troops grew negligent thro' want of pay; Sedition's hollow murmur grew more loud, And dire impends rebellion's thick'ning cloud. Too late the clamor reach'd the royal ear, T'avert the storm was now his only care. Pensive he stroll'd the fields, at ease to think On means to stop him on destruction's brink.

As thus employ'd, a shepherd struck his view
Hanging a dog; the monarch swiftly flew

To ask the cause of treatment so severe :-
"His crime is black," replied the clown austere;
"Behold a traitor, and a traitor's due!

"I rais'd and fed him; but the cur untrue
"Betray'd his trust-nay with the wolf combin'd,
"To thin the flock to his defence consign'd.
"Caught in the fact, the wily villain dies-
"No less a sentence justice will suffice."

The king his own imprudence now discern'd-
This truth important from a shepherd learn'd:
That kings should look into their own affairs,
Nor trust to others' eyes, and others' ears.
Of cur and vizier similar the deed,
A sim❜lar punishment the king decreed.
Such an example of their pow'rful chief
Struck terror into ev'ry lesser thief;
Economy brought order in her hand,

And scatter'd happiness throughout the land.

Such should have been long ago the fate of the Prince of Peace, and hundreds of others, generals as well as ministers of the continental power. We have been grossly deceived in the Spaniards, and have mistaken the procla

mations of some few powerful individuals, struggling to keep their hoards and offices, for the voice of the nation. Alas! they have been long immersed in deeper shades of ignorance than Egyptian darkness itself. Buonaparte knows them to a hair. In his 22d bulletin he says, that "the British, in their flight, killed all the horses that were over fatigued or wounded, and which might embarrass their retreat. It is scarcely credible (he adds) how that spectacle, so shocking to our manners, of hundreds of horses shot with pistols, is revolting to the Spaniards. Many persons look upon it as a sort of sacrifice-some religious rite, which gives rise, in the minds of the Spaniards, to very strange pictures of the religion of England!!!”— We may laugh at this most execrable nonsense, if we please, but Buonaparté, we shall find, will frame a handle of this contemptible tool to carve out for us the inveterate hatred and detestation of the ignorant and bigotted Spaniards, who really know no difference between protestantism and pa

« ÎnapoiContinuă »