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    To clear our full jails , in a right brief space . Of many a pale and spirit-worn recluse—While to the winds you might as well go whistle ^ As hope to meet one liberated Chrysal . * 7 . This " glorious constitution" of our nation , However grave it may be on the whole . Is sometimes a most merry legislation , Fond of a joke , facetious o ' er a bowl—Enacting the Joe Miller on occasion With gravity inimitably droll > — To which there ' s no objection on our parts , Except that , with its jests , it breaks men ' s hearts .

    8 . Such jests , it must be ownM , are rather serious . Especially to those on whom they fall ; To them , at least , they sound somewhat imperious ^ Or what , in other nations , we should call Tyrannic ;—but , of course , none but delirious , Or very silly people would at all Dream of asserting that tliere can be found One trace of tyranny on English ground .

    9 . What an infinity of wittiness Lies in our free-born mode of treating debtors ! The instant that a man is pennyless , We lock him up ;—and , save the want of fetters ^ We make no difference ' twixt him and the Aless Of cut-purses and murderous blood-letters ;— - Which proves we are , in classifying morals , Nice as Linnaeus was in flowers and corals *

    10 . It is not always that , in the same thing , Wisdom and wit meet in the same degree ~ , But in the plan , for laud whereof I sing , They mix in most exact equality . The stray sheep of the golden fleece to bring Back to the fold from which they first got free , What step so sage as shutting up the pastor By way of making them return the faster \

    11 . One never can sufficiently admire The ingenuity of this deep scheme - It needed an Egeria to inspire The Numa who first dreamt the brilliant dream : — Who would have thought that locking up the lyre Was the best way to sluice the Muses'

    streamlhat bees shut up in hives would make most honey—And men in prison from the stones draw money ? 12 . Not I , for one : —but , wise and witty as The scheme may be , its wisdom and its wit Are secondary to a nobler cause : Humanity , all Christians must admit , Shines , in this grave provision of our laws , Above them both ;—when once a man is bit

    * Alluding to Swift's well-known talc , " Chrysal , or the Adventures of a Guinea . "

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    368 Poetry . — Stanzas on Imprisonment for Debt .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1826, page 368, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2549/page/52/