More verse and prose By the Cornlaw Rhymer [i.e. Ebenezer Elliott]. In two volumes |
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[If hard and tough grow butchers' bums] |
 | More verse and prose |  |
[If hard and tough grow butchers' bums]
QUEER BOBBY IN 1837. BUT NOT THE BOBBY OF 1846.
“News! news!” “What news?”“The skin of a butcher's a---e
Would sole a pair of shoes.”
Old Ballad.
1
If hard and tough grow butchers' bums,Because they often ride;
If thick with cant, as both my thumbs,
Is meek Saint Agnew's hide;
If consciences grow thick and foul
With quibbles that men use;
The skin of sweet Sir Robert's soul
Would sole a pair of shoes.
2
If greedy men, with eating ducks,Web-footed ne'er have grown,
The landed leech, our blood that sucks,
Wont bring us beef from stone;
Have tough as teak become,
Sir Robert, bobbing up and down,
Is like a butcher's bum.
3
And if his soul's thin skin grows toughWith bobbing up and down;
And nought but leather's tough enough
To save a leagur'd town;
What need we do, our foes to ban,
Our country's wounds to heal,
But get some practis'd hand to tan
The well-bobb'd soul of Peel?
4
And since the man won't think it sinTo save a soul from hell—
But which his soul, and which his skin,
May find it hard to tell—
What need we do, I fain would learn,
If such a case befal,
But lime and soak the whole concern,
And tan him, soul and all?
5
But where a tanner shall we get,Not squeamish in his wame?
For Brougham no longer tans such ket;
My lords, it were a shame!
Of bobbers, as is fit,
And send him, nick-nam'd “Baron Bum,”
Up to the civet-pit.
What a knitter of stockings is in a family, since the invention of the stocking-loom, Peel is in Parliament. The improved machinery of the human mind has, to this hour, wrought no beneficial effect upon him. He is still a knitter, painfully taking up spinster's stitches, worth, in a pair of stockings, fourpence! Place him in his natural position, take the pins from his fingers, force into his hand a book containing the alphabet of political science, and before the close of another year, he will cease to be overtopped in mental stature by any mechanic's apprentice. He is not a goose, and if he were, plucking one does not enable it to fly better; why, then, does he pluck himself? He is blinded by the glare of the cruel sunshine which fortune has cast upon him. Strip him of his artificial advantages, and you give him an eagle's wing. Sprung from the people, why does he not lead public opinion? The reek of the aristocratic dunghill covers him, like a nightmare, forcing on him a dream of vulgarity hostile to his noble nature. Why should such a man wish to be a Stanley? By no possible process can the healthy verjuice of humanity be turned into aromatic vinegar, acceptable in Puppydom. Upperthorpe, 3rd Feb., 1837.
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