specimens as I go on, and shall intermix them with political epigrams; but as to any formal political essay I fear I am not equal to do it at all."
Some of the epigrams were pleasant specimens of what his friends in after life came to call Manganesque. For example:—
"Says the bell to the bell-hanger, stop, my old trout,
Take your hand from my throat, let me off, let me out,
I'll be hanged if you know what it is you're about."
Or this—
"'Tell me, my man, what is his honour's name,
The chief ground landlord of this wilderness?'
'The grinding landlord you must mean,' says Pat,
'It is the tenants who are ground, I guess.'"
I wrote a few ballads which I still smile or blush to encounter in collections of national verse, and T. M. Hughes did much better. Here is one of his rude, vigorous songs which glows with all the fervour that a little later inspired the "Spirit of the Nation":—
"Oh, bitter's the lot of the vanquished 'tis still to be scoffed at and scorned;
The arms that are weakly relinquished to goads for the fallen are turned!
What, dare you to call yourselves equal to those who have bound you so long?
What, dare you to look for a sequel but hate and oppression, to wrong?
'Barbarians, ill-fed and ill-clothed,' your lords are the rulers of earth;
By them know your manhood is loathed; to them know your wrongs are a mirth!
Look, bondsmen, for help to the Senate! Bleat, lambkins, and soften the wolf!
Can the drowning man's prayer for a minute pour oil on the merciless gulf?
When our shores by the Dane were invaded, brave Brian petitioned with steel;
How he scowls while his children degraded to lordlings a-blubbering kneel!
Invaded in hearth and in altar! in language, religion, and blood,
Pronounced to be aliens[1] why falter, whose rights are all crushed in the bud?
Hath Heaven the fair Emerald Island to waste as a province decreed?
Eat your roots, ye cowed slaves, and be silent, or learn to be aliens indeed!"
- ↑ Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst had recently declared that the Irish were aliens in blood, language, and religion.
