An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill
Lines:32Movement:Romanticism
OH well done Lord E---- n! and better done R----r! Britannia must prosper with councils like yours;Hawkesbury, Harrowby, help you to guide her, Whose remedy only must _kill_ ere it cures:Those villains; the Weavers, are all grown refractory, Asking some succour for Charity's sake--So hang them in clusters round each Manufactory, That will at once put an end to _mistake_. The rascals, perhaps, may betake them to robbing, The dogs to be sure have got nothing to eat--So if we can hang them for breaking a bobbin, 'T will save all the Government's money and meat:Men are more easily made than machinery-- Stockings fetch better prices than lives--Gibbets on Sherwood will heighten the scenery, Shewing how Commerce, how Liberty thrives! Justice is now in pursuit of the wretches, Grenadiers, Volunteers, Bow-street Police,Twenty-two Regiments, a score of Jack Ketches, Three of the Quorum and two of the Peace;Some Lords, to be sure, would have summoned the Judges, To take their opinion, but that they ne'er shall,For LIVERPOOL such a concession begrudges, So now they're condemned by _no Judges_ at all. Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking, When Famine appeals and when Poverty groans,That Life should be valued at less than a stocking, And breaking of frames lead to breaking of bones.If it should prove so, I trust, by this token, (And who will refuse to partake in the hope?)That the frames of the fools may be first to be _broken_, Who, when asked for a _remedy_, sent down a _rope_.