Oh! where are the riches that bubbled like fountains,
In places we neither could utter nor spell,
A thousand miles inland, 'mid untrodden mountains,
Where silver and gold grew like heath and blue-bell?
Oh! where are the lakes overflowing with treasure?
The gold-dust that rolled in each torrent and stream?
The mines that held water by cubic-mile measure,
So easily pumped up by portable steam?
That water our prospects a damp could not throw on;
We had only a million-horse power to prepare,
Make a thousand-mile road for the engine to go on,
And send coals from Newcastle to boil it when there.
Oh! where are the bridges to span the Atlantic?
Oh! where is the gas to illumine the poles?
They came to our visions; that makes us half-frantic:
They came to our pockets; that touches our souls.
Oh! there is the seat of most exquisite feeling:
The first pair of nerves to the pocket doth dive: A wound in our hearts would be no time in healing, But a wound in our pockets how can we survive?
Now curst be the projects, and curst the projectors,
And curst be the bubbles before us that rolled,
Which, bursting, have left us like desolate spectres,
Bewailing our bodies of paper and gold.
For what is a man but his coat and his breeches,
His plate and his linen, his land and his house?
Oh! we had been men had we won our mock riches,
But now we are ghosts, each as poor as a mouse.
But shades as we are, we, with shadowy bubbles,
When the midnight bell tolls, will through Capel Court glide,
And the dream of the Jew shall be turmoils and troubles, When he sees each pale ghost on its bubble astride.
And the lecturing Scots that upheld the delusion,
By prating of paper, and wealth, and free trade,
Shall see us by night, to their awe and confusion,
Grim phantoms of wrath that shall never be laid.
"The Scot, to rival realms a mighty bar,
Here fixed his mountain home: a wide domain,
And rich the soil, had purple heath been grain:
But what the niggard ground of wealth denied,
From fields more blest his fearless arm supplied.'
THE Scotts, Kerrs, and Murrays, and Deloraines all,
The Hughies o' Hawdon, and Wills-o'-the-Wall,
The Willimondswicks, and the hard-riding Dicks,
Are staunch to the last to their old border tricks;
Wine flows not from heath, and bread grinds not from stone, They must reeve for their living, or life they'll have none.
When the Southron's strong arm with the steel and the law,
Had tamed the moss-troopers, so bonny and braw;
Though spiders wove webs in the rusty sword-hilt,
In the niche of the hall which their forefathers built;
Yet with sly paper-credit and promise to pay,
They still drove the trade which the wise call convey.t
They whitewashed the front of their old border fort;
They widened its loop-holes, and opened its court;
They put in sash-windows where none were before,
And they wrote the word "BANK" o'er the new-painted door;
The cross-bow and matchlock aside they did lay,
And they shot the proud Southron with promise to pay.
† Steal! odious is the word—convey the wise it call.—Pistol.
They shot him from far, and they shot him from near,
And they laid him as flat as their fathers laid deer:
Their fathers were heroes, though some called them thieves When they ransacked their dwellings, and drove off their beeves;
But craft undermined what force battered in vain,
And the pride of the Southron was stretched on the plain.
Now joy to the Hughies and Willies so bold!
The Southron, like Dickon, is bought and is sold;
To his goods and his chattels, his house and his land,
Their promise to pay is as Harlequin's wand:
A touch and a word, and pass, presto, begone,
The Southron has lost, and the Willies have won.
The Hughies and Willies may lead a glad life:
They reap without sowing, they win without strife:
The Bruce and the Wallace were sturdy and fierce,
But where Scotch steel was broken Scotch paper can pierce;
And the true meed of conquest our minstrels shall fix,
On the promise to pay of our Willimondswicks.
"Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est."
ST. PETER of Scotland set sail with a crew
Of philosophers, picked from the Bluecap Review:
His boat was of paper, old rags were her freight,
And her bottom was sheathed with a spruce copper-plate.
Her mast was a quill, and to catch the fair gale
The broad gray goose feather was spread for a sale;
So he ploughed his blithe way through the surge and the
And the name of his boat was the Promise-to-Pay.
And swiftly and gaily she went on her track,
As if she could never be taken a-back,
As if in her progress there never could be
A chop of the wind or a swell of the sea.
She was but a fair-weather vessel, in sooth,
For winds that were gentle, and waves that were smooth;
She was built not for storm, she was armed not for strife,
But in her St. Peter risked fortune and life.
His fortune, 'tis true, was but bundles of rag,
That no pedlar, not Scotch, would have put in his bag;
The worth of his life none could know but the few
Who insured it on sailing from Sweet Edinbroo."
St. Peter seemed daft, and he laughed and he quaffed;
But an ill-boding wave struck his vessel right aft:
It stove in his quarters and swamped his frail boat,
Which sunk with an eddy and left him afloat.
He clung to his goose-quill and floated all night,
And he landed at daybreak in pitiful plight;
And he preached a discourse when he reached the good town,
Το prove that his vessel should not have gone down.
The nautical science he took for his guide
Allowed no such force as the wind or the tide :·
None but blockheads could think such a science o'erthrown, By the breath of a gale which ought not to have blown.
LAMENT OF SCOTCH ECONOMISTS
ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE ONE-POUND NOTES.
Do not halloo before you are out of the wood.
CASTLEREAGH, of blessed memory.
OH hone-a-rie! Oh hone-a-rie!
The pride of paper's reign is o'er,
And fall'n the flower of credit's tree:
We ne'er shall see a flimsy more.
Oh! sprung from great I-will-not-pay,
The chief that never feared a dun,
How hopeful was thy ne'er-come-day,
How comely thy symbolic ONE!
The country loons with wonder saw
The magic type perform its rounds,
Transforming many a man of straw
To men of many thousand pounds.
For northern lads blithe days were those;
They wanted neither beef nor ale,
Surprised their toes with shoes and hose,
And made Scotch broo' of English cail.
Oh! Johnny Groat, we little thought,
Tow'rds thee our noses e'er would point;
But flimsies burned, and cash returned,
Will put said noses out of joint.
Improvements vast will then be past:
The march of mind will backward lead;
For how can mind be left behind,
When we march back across the Tweed?
Scotch logic floats on one-pound notes:
When rags are cash our shirts are ore:
What else would go to scare the crow,
Becomes a myriad pounds and more.
A scarecrow's suit would furnish forth
A good Scotch bank's whole stock in trade:
The wig, for coinage nothing worth,
Might "surplus capital" be made.
Oh! happy land, by Scotchmen taught!
Thy fate was then indeed divine,
When every scarecrow's pole was thought
A true Real del Monte mine.
Oh mystic ONE, that turned out NONE,
When senseless panic pressed thee hard! Who thee could hold and call out "Gold !" Would he had feathered been and tarred.
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