Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin: Comprising the Celebrated Political and Satirical Poems, of the Rt. Hons. G. Canning, John Hookham Frere, W. Pitt, the Marquis Wellesley, G. Ellis, W. Gifford, the Earl of Carlisle, and Others.
History
Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin: Comprising the Celebrated Political and Satirical Poems, of the Rt. Hons. G. Canning, John Hookham Frere, W. Pitt, the Marquis Wellesley, G. Ellis, W. Gifford, the Earl of Carlisle, and Others.
English poetry; France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Poetry; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1789-1820
“With respect to religion, altho’ Mr. M’Kean was pleased to number
it among the things that were in danger from the licentiousness of
the press, and of course from poor _me_, I think it would puzzle the
devil himself to produce from my writings, a single passage, which
could, by all the powers of perversion be twisted into an attack
upon it. But it would on the contrary be extremely easy to prove,
that I have at all times, when an opportunity offered, repelled the
attacks of its enemies, the abominable battalions of Deists and
Atheists, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and
with all my strength. The bitterest drop in my pen has ever been
bestowed upon them; because, of all the foes of the human race, I
look upon them, after the devil, as being the greatest and most
dreadful. Not a sacrilegious plunderer from Henry VIII. to
Condorcet, and from Condorcet to the impious Sans-culottes of
France, has escaped my censure. All those, who have attempted to
degrade religion whether by open insults and cruelties to the
clergy, by blasphemous publications or by the more dangerous poison
of the malignant modern philosophy, I have ranked amongst the most
infamous of mankind, and have treated them accordingly.”
In the concluding part of his tract the author clearly convicts the
Judge of the most decided and most flagrant partiality. He quotes a
number of infamous libels, on religious and political subjects,
which had never roused the indignation, nor even excited the
censure, of those whose duty it is to preserve the public peace and
to enforce a due observance of the laws. If, indeed, we were to
judge, from this specimen, of the mode of administring justice in
America, in matters of libel, we should conclude, that every degree
of licentiousness is allowed to those who seek to debauch the minds
of the people, to seduce them from their allegiance, and to dissolve
every tie which religion and morality have formed for the happiness
of men in a social state, while the upright supporters of virtue,
whose labours are directed to the prevention of anarchy and
rebellion, by detecting the views and exposing the machinations of
their abettors, are the sole objects not merely of _pro_secution but
of _per_secution.
The abuse bestowed on the mild and beneficent sovereigns of these
realms by the Democratic factions in the American Congress, is
almost equal in severity to the censures lavished by some members of
opposition during the _last_ parliament in the British Senate, on
the Kings of Prussia and Hungary, _before_ those monarchs had become
allies of _France_.
The following extracts will, at once, afford a criterion of the
political principles of public men, in the State of Pennsylvania,
and a curious specimen of republican _morality_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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