And now I’ll tell you what you teach In downright honest English speech. ’You teach the ground-down starving man That Squire’s greed’s Jehovah’s plan. You get his learning circumvented Lest it should make him discontented (Better a brutal, starving nation Than men with thoughts above their station), You let him neither read nor think, You goad his wretched soul to drink And then to jail, the drunken boor; O sad intemperance of the poor. You starve his soul till it’s rapscallion, Then blame his flesh for being stallion. You send your wife around to paint The golden glories of "restraint." How moral exercise bewild’rin’ Would soon result in fewer children. You work a day in Squire’s fields And see what sweet restraint it yields; A woman’s day at turnip picking, Your heart’s too fat for plough or ricking. ’And you whom luck taught French and Greek Have purple flaps on either cheek, A stately house, and time for knowledge, And gold to send your sons to college, That pleasant place, where getting learning Is also key to money earning. But quite your damn’dest want of grace Is what you do to save your face; The way you sit astride the gates By padding wages out of rates; Your Christmas gifts of shoddy blankets That every working soul may thank its Loving parson, loving squire Through whom he can’t afford a fire. Your well-packed bench, your prison pen, To keep them something less than men; Your friendly clubs to help ’em bury, Your charities of midwifery. Your bidding children duck and cap To them who give them workhouse pap. O, what you are, and what you preach, And what you do, and what you teach Is not God’s Word, nor honest schism, But Devil’s cant and pauperism.’ By this time many folk had gathered To listen to me while I blathered; I said my piece, and when I’d said it, I’ll do old purple parson credit, He sunk (as sometimes parsons can) His coat’s excuses in the man. ’You think that Squire and I are kings Who made the existing state of things, And made it ill. I answer, No, States are not made, nor patched; they grow, Grow slow through centuries of pain And grow correctly in the main, But only grow by certain laws Of certain bits in certain jaws. You want to doctor that. Let be. You cannot patch a growing tree. Put these two words beneath your hat, These two: securus judicat.