University of Virginia Library

The MOB-CALL, or the Charter of Sedition.

Huzza, my Jo Bunkers! no taxes we'll pay,
Here's a pardon for Wheeler, Shays, Parsons and Day;
Put green boughs in your hats, and renew the old cause,
Stop the courts in each county, and bully the laws:
Constitutions and oaths, sir, we mind not a rush,
Such trifles must yield to us lads of the bush;

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New laws and new charters our books shall display,
Compos'd by Conventions and Counsellor Grey:
Since Boston and Salem so haughty have grown,
We'll make them to know we can let them alone.
Of Glasgow or Pelham we'll make a sea-port,
And there we'll assemble our General Court:
Our Governor, now, boys, shall turn out to work,
And live, like ourselves, on molasses and pork;
In Adams or Greenwich he'll live like a Peer
On three hundred pounds, paper money, a year.
Grand-Jurors, and Sheriffs, and Lawyers we'll spurn,
As Judges we'll all take the bench in our turn,
And sit the whole term without pension or fee,
Nor Cushing or Sewal look graver than we.
Our wigs, though they're rusty, are decent enough,
Our aprons, though black, are of durable stuff,
Array'd in such geer, the laws we'll explain,
That poor people no more shall have cause to complain.
To Congress and impost we'll plead a release;
The French we can beat half a dozen a piece;

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We want not their guineas, their arms or alliance;
And as for the Dutchmen, we bid them defiance.
Then huzza, my Jo Bunkers! no taxes we'll pay,
Here's a pardon for Wheeler, Shays, Parsons and Day;
Put green boughs in your hats, and renew the old cause,
Stop the courts in each county, and bully the laws.
 

Names of the leaders of the insurrection that arose, in 1786, in the State of Massachusetts, chiefly in the counties of Hampshire, Berkshire, and Worcester; which, after convulsing the State for about a year, was finally quelled by a military force under the command of General Lincoln and General Shepherd. The leaders fled from the State, and were afterwards pardoned. See Minot's History of the Insurrection in Massachusetts.