Joking apart, we women have strong reason To sap the progress of this popish treason; For now, when female liberty’s at stake, All women ought to bustle for its sake. Should these malicious sons of Rome prevail, Vows, convents, and that heathen thing, a veil, Must come in fashion; and such institutions Would suit but oddly with our constitutions. What gay coquette would brook a nun’s profession? And I’ve some private reasons ’gainst confession. Besides, our good men of the Church, they say (Who now, thank Heaven, may love as well as pray) Must then be only wed to cloister’d houses;―― Stop! There we’re fobb’d of twenty thousand spouses! And, faith! no bad ones, as I’m told; then judge ye, Is’t fit we lose our benefit of clergy? In Freedom’s cause, ye patriot fair, arise! Exert the sacred influence of your eyes. On valiant merit deign alone to smile, And vindicate the glory of our isle. To no base coward prostitute our charms; Disband the lover who deserts his arms. So shall ye fire each hero to his duty, And _British_ rights be saved by _British_ beauty. [Sidenote: _THE PRESS, ON CULLODEN._] The Whig press was, of course, jubilant. The papers in the opposite interest put as good a face as they could on the matter, and expressed a conviction that they ‘ventured no treason in hoping that the _weather might change_.’ The ‘Craftsman’ was, or affected to be, beside itself for joy at the thought that no foreign mercenaries had helped to reap the laurels at Culloden. The victory was won by British troops only; and the duke might say, like Coriolanus, ‘Alone, I did it!’ The ‘True Patriot’ insisted on some share of the laurels being awarded to the king, since he stood singly in refusing to despair of the monarchy, when all other men were, or seemed, hopeless and helpless. To which the ‘Western Journal’ added that not merely was the king far-seeing, and the duke victorious at the head of English troops without foreign auxiliaries, but that never before had an English army made its way so far into the country, to crush a Scottish foe. The ‘Journal,’ much read in all London coffee-houses resorted to by Western gentlemen, was opposed to the killing of rebels in cold blood, and could not see what profit was to be got by hanging them. This paper suggested that some benefit might be obtained by making slaves of them; not by transporting them to the Plantations, but by compelling them to serve in the herring and salmon fisheries, for the advantage of the compellers, that is, the Government! [Sidenote: _SAVAGERY AND SATIRE._]