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Title: Notions On Reform
Author: Thomas Moore [
More Titles by Moore]
BY A MODERN REFORMER.
Of all the misfortunes as yet brought to pass
By this comet-like Bill, with its long tail of speeches,
The saddest and worst is the schism which, alas!
It has caused between Wetherel's waistcoat and breeches.
Some symptoms of this Anti-Union propensity
Had oft broken out in that quarter before;
But the breach, since the Bill, has attained such immensity,
Daniel himself could have scarce wisht it more.
Oh! haste to repair it, ye friends of good order,
Ye Atwoods and Wynns, ere the moment is past;
Who can doubt that we tread upon Anarchy's border,
When the ties that should hold men are loosening so fast?
_Make_ Wetherel yield to "some sort of Reform"
(As we all must, God help us! with very wry faces;)
And loud as he likes let him bluster and storm
About Corporate Rights, so he'll only wear braces.
Should those he now sports have been long in possession,
And, like his own borough, the worse for the wear,
Advise him at least as a prudent concession
To Intellect's progress, to buy a new pair.
Oh! who that e'er saw him when vocal he stands,
With a look something midway 'twixt Filch's and Lockit's,
While still, to inspire him, his deeply-thrust hands
Keep jingling the rhino in both breeches-pockets--
Who that ever has listened thro' groan and thro' cough,
To the speeches inspired by this music of pence,--
But must grieve that there's any thing like _falling off_
In that great nether source of his wit and his sense?
Who that knows how he lookt when, with grace debonair,
He began first to court--rather late in the season--
Or when, less fastidious, he sat in the chair
Of his old friend, the Nottingham Goddess of Reason;[1]
That Goddess whose borough-like virtue attracted
All mongers in _both_ wares to proffer their love;
Whose chair like the stool of the Pythoness acted,
As Wetherel's rants ever since go to prove;
_Who_ in short would not grieve if a man of his graces
Should go on rejecting, unwarned by the past,
The "moderate Reform" of a pair of new braces,
Till, some day,--he'll all fall to pieces at last.
NOTE:
[1] It will be recollected that the learned gentleman himself boasted, one night, in the House of Commons, of having sat in the very chair which this allegorical lady had occupied.
[The end]
Thomas Moore's poem: Notions On Reform
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