And the first smith was the first murderer's son.
His art survived the waters; and ere long,
When man was multiplied and spread abroad
In tribes and clans, and had begun to call
These meadows and that range of hills his own,
The tasted sweets of property begat

Desire of more, and industry in some,

To improve and cultivate their just demesne,
Made others covet what they saw so fair.

Thus war began on earth: These fought for spoil,
And those in self-defence. Savage at first
The onset and irregular. At length

One eminent above the rest for strength,
For stratagem, for courage, or for all,

Was chosen leader; him they served in war,

And him in peace, for sake of warlike deeds
Reverenced no less. Who could with him compare'
Or who so worthy to control themselves,
As he whose prowess had subdued their foes?
Thus war, affording field for the display

Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace,
Which have their exigencies too, and call
For skill in government, at length made king.
King was a name too proud for man to wear
With modesty and meekness; and the crown
So dazzling, in their eyes, who set it on,
Was sure to intoxicate the brows it bound,
It is the abject property of most,
That, being parcel of the common mass,
Aud destitute of means to raise themselves,

They sink, and settle lower than they need.
They know not what it is to feel within
A comprehensive faculty, that grasps

Great purposes with case, that turns and wields,
Almost without an effort, plans too vast
For their conception which they cannot move.
Conscious of impotence they soon grow drunk
With gazing, when they see an able man
Step forth to notice: and besotted thus,
Build him a pedestal, and say, Stand there,
And be our admiration and our praise.'
They roll themselves before him in the dust,

Then most deserving in their own account,
When most extravagant in his applause:
As if exalting him they raised themselves.
Thus by degrees, self-cheated of their sound
And sober judgment, that he is but man,
They demi-deify and fume him so,
That in due season he forgets it too.
Inflated and astrut with self-conceit,
He gulps the windy diet; and ere long,
Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks
The World was made in vain, if not for him.
Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born
To bear his burdens, drawing in his gears,
And sweating in his service, his caprice
Becomes the soul that animates them all.
He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives,
Spent in the purchase of renown for him,
An easy reckoning; and they think the same.
Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings
Were burnished into heroes, and became
The arbiters of this terraqueous swamp;
Storks among frogs, that have but croak'd and died.
Strange, that such folly, as lifts bloated man
To eminence fit only for a god,

Should ever drivel out of human lips,

E'en in the cradled weakness of the world!
Still stranger much, that when at length mankind
Had reach'd the sinewy firmness of their youth,
And could discriminate and argue well

On subjects more mysterious, they were yet
Babes in the cause of freedom, and should fear
And quake before the gods themselves had made:
But above measure strange, that neither proof
Of sad experience, nor examples set
By some, whose patriot virtue has prevail'd,
Can even now, when they are grown mature
In wisdom, and with philosophic deeds
Familiar, serve to emancipate the rest!
Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone
To reverence what is ancient, and can plead
A course of long observance for its use,
That even servitude, the worst of ills,

Because delivered down from sire to son,
Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Or rational discussion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust
And folly in as ample measure meet,
As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules,
Should be a despot absolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land!

Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will,
Wage war, with any or with no pretence
Of provocation given, or wrong sustain'd.
And force the beggarly last doit, by means
That his own humour dictates, from the clutch
Of Poverty, that thus he may procure

His thousands, weary of penurious life,

A splendid opportunity to die?

Say ye, who (with less prudence than of old
Jotham ascribed to his assembled trees

In politic convention) put your trust
In the shadow of a bramble, and reclined
In fancied peace beneath his dangerous branch,
Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway,

Where find ye passive fortitude? Whence spring)
Your self-denying zeal, that holds it good,
To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang
His thorns with streamers of continual praise?
We too are friends to loyalty. We love

The king who loves the law, respects his bonis,
And reigns content within them; him we serve
Freely and with delight, who leaves us free:
But recollecting still that he is man,

We trust him not too far. King though he De,
And king in England too, he may be weak,
And vain enough to be ambitious still;
May exercise amiss his proper powers,
Or covet more than freemen choose to grant;
Beyond that mark is treason. He is ours,
To administer, to guard, to adorn the state,
But not to warp or change it. We are his,
To serve him nobly in the common cause,

True to the death, but not to be his slaves.
Mark now the difference, ye that boast your love
of kings, between your loyalty and ours.
We love the man, the paltry pageant you:
We the chief patron of the commonwealth,
You the regardless author of its woes:
We for the sake of liberty a king,

You chains and bondage for a tyrant's sake.
Our love is principle, and has its root
In reason, is judicious, manly, free:

Yours, a blind instinct, crouches to the rod,
And licks the foot that treads it in the dust.
Were kingship as true treasure as it seems,
Sterling, and worthy of a wise man's wish,
I would not be a king to be beloved

Causeless, and daub'd with undiscerning praise,
Where love is mere attachment to the throne;
Not to the man who fills it as he ought.
Whose freedom is by sufferance, and at will
Of a superior, he is never free.

Who lives and is not weary of a life

Exposed to manacles, deserves them well.

The state, that strives for liberty, though foil'd,
And forced to abandon what she bravely sought,
Deserves at least applause for her attempt,
And pity for her loss. But that's a cause
Not often unsuccessful: power usurp'd

Is weakness when opposed; conscious of wrong,
'Tis pusillanimous and prone to flight.

But slaves, that once conceive the glowing thought. Of freedom, in that hope itself possess

All that the contest calls for; spirit, strength,

The scorn of danger, and united hearts:

The surest presage of the good they seek.*

Then shame to manhood, and opprobrious more To France than all her losses and defeats,

Old or of later date, by sea or land,

Her house of bondage, worse than that of old

The author hopes that he shall not be censured for unneces sary warmth upon so interesting a subject. He is aware, that i is become almost fashionable to stigmatise such sentiments no better than empty declaination; but it is an ill symptom, peculiar to modern times.

Which God avenged on Pharaoh-the Bastile.
Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken hearts;
Ye dungeons, and ye cages of despair,

That monarchs have supplied from age to age
With music, such as suits their sovereign ears,
The sighs and groans of miserable men!
There's not an English heart that would not leap
To hear that ye were fallen at last; to know
That e'en our enemies, so oft employ'd
In forging chains for us, themselves were free.
For he who values Liberty, confines

His zeal for her predominance within
No narrow bounds; her cause engages him
Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of inan.
There dwell the most forlorn of human kind,
Immured, though unaccused, condemned untried,
Cruelly spared and hopeless of escape.
There, like the visionary emblem seen
By him of Babylon, life stands a stump,
And, filleted about with hoops of brass,

Still lives, though all its pleasant boughs are gone.
To count the hour-bell and expect no change;
And ever, as the sullen sound is heard,
Still to reflect that, though a joyous note
To him whose moments all have one dull pace,
Ten thousand rovers in the world at large
Account it music; that it sunmons some
To theatre or jocund feast, or ball:
The wearied hireling finds it a release
From labour, and the lover, who has chid
Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke
Upon his heart-strings, trembling with delight--
To fly for refuge from distracting thought
To such amusements as ingenious woe
Contrives, hard-shifting, and without her tools--
To read engraven on the mouldy walls,
In staggering types, his predecessor's tale,
A sad memorial, and subjoin his own-
To turn purveyor to an overgorged
And bloated spider, till the pamper'd pest
Is made familiar, watches his approach,
Comes at his call, and serves him for a friend-