And Master Peter Alexander Weddel
Invested with a medal

For getting on so very far-in-tosh;
Fancy the Dominie-a drouthy body——
Giving a lecture upon making toddy,
Till, having emptied every stoup and cup,
He cries, "Lads! go and play-the school is up!"

To Scotland, Ireland is akin

In drinking, like as twin to twin ;
When other means are all adrift,

A liquor-shop is Pat's last shift,

Till, reckoning Erin round from store to store,
There is one whiskey-shop in four.*

Then who, but with a fancy rather frisky,

And warm besides, and generous with whiskey,
Not seeing most particularly clear,

Would recommend to make the drunkards thinner
By shutting up the publican and sinner

With pensions each of fifty pounds a year?†
Ods! taps and topers! private stills and worms!
What doors you'd soon have open to your terms !

To men of common gumption,

How strange, besides, must seem
At this time any scheme.

To put a check upon potheen's consumption,

* 3804. Did you observe the drinking of spirits very general in Ireland? -In Ireland, I think, upon a moderate calculation, one shop out of every four is a whiskey-shop, throughout the whole kingdom. Those who have been unsuccessful in every other employment, and those who have no capital for any employment, fly to the selling of whiskey as the last shift.

† 773. Now, suppose we were to give £50 a-year to every spirit-seller in Belfast, to pension them off (and I am sure it would be much better for the country that they should be paid for doing nothing than for doing mischief).

When all are calling out for Irish Poor Laws!

Instead of framing more laws,

To pauperism if you'd give a pegger,

Don't check, but patronise their "Kill the Beggar!"*
If Pat is apt to go in Irish Linen

(Buttoning his coat, with nothing but his skin in),
Would any Christian man-that's quite himself,
His wits not floored, or laid upon the shelf—
While blaming Pat for raggedness, poor boy,
Would he deprive him of his "Corduroy !"+

Would any gentleman, unless inclining
To tipsy, take a board upon his shoulder,
Near Temple Bar, thus warning the beholder,
66 'BEWARE OF TWINING ?”

Are tea-dealers, indeed, so deep designing,
As one of your select would set us thinking,
That to each tea-chest we should say, Tu Doces
(Or doses),

Thou tea-chest drinking?

What would be said of me

Should I attempt to trace

The vice of drinking to the high in place,

And say its root was on the top o' the tree?§

* 794. We have in our neighborhood a species of whiskey of this kind, called "Kill the Beggar."

† 795. Another description of what would be termed adulterated spirits, is by the vulgar termed "Corduroy."

798. It is quite common, in Dublin particularly, to have at one end of the counter a large pile of tea-chests for females to go behind, to be hid from sight; but the dangerous secrecy arises chiefly from the want of suspicion in persons going into grocers' shops.

788. It is a well-known fact, that mechanics' wives not unfrequently get portions of spirituous liquors at grocers' shops, and have them set down to their husbands' accounts as soap, sugar, tea, &c.

§ 816. Do you ascribe the great inclination for whiskey at present existing

But I am not pot-valiant, and I shun

To say how high potheen might have a run.*

What would you think, if, talking about stingo,
I told you that a lady friend of mine,

By only looking at her wine

Flushed in her face as red as a flamingo ?†
Would you not ask of me, like many more,

66

Pray, sir, what had the lady had before?"

Suppose at sea, in Biscay's bay of bays,
A rum-cask bursting in a blaze,

Should I be thought half tipsy or whole drunk,
If, running all about the deck, I roared
"I say, is ever a Cork man aboard ?”
Answered by some Hibernian Jack Junk,

While hitching up his tarry trowser,
How would it sound in sober ears, O how, sir,
If I should bellow with redoubled noise,

"Then sit upon the bung-hole, broth of boys!"‡

among the lower classes, originally to the use of it by the higher classes as a favorite drink?—I attribute a very large portion of the evils arising from the use of spirituous liquors to the sanction they have received from the higher classes: the respectable in society I hold to be the chief patrons of drunkenness.

* 759. What do you mean by the phrase run ?—It means, according to a common saying, that for one gallon made for the King, another is made for the Queen.

† 4627. A lady informed me lately, that, in dining out, although she should not taste a drop in the hob and nob at dinner, yet the lifting of the glass as frequently as etiquette requires, generally flushed her face a good deal before dinner was ended.

‡ 3901. Are you aware of the cause of the burning of the Kent East Indiaman in the Bay of Biscay?-Holding a candle over the bung-hole of a cask of spirits, the snuff fell into the cask and set it on fire. They had not presence of mind to put in the bung, which would have put out the fire; and if a man had sat on the bung-hole it would not have burnt him, and it would have put it out.

When men the fact's well known-reel to and fro,
A little what is called how-come-you-so,
They think themselves as steady as a steeple,
And lay their staggerings on other people-
Taking that fact in pawn,

What proper inference would then be drawn
By e'er a dray-horse with a head to his tail,
Should anybody cry

To some one going by,

"O fie! O fie! O fie!

You're drunk - you've nigh had half a pint of ale!"*

One certain sign of fumes within the skull,
They say, is being rather slow and dull,
Oblivious quite of what we are about;
No one can doubt

Some weighty queries rose, and yet you missed 'em :
For instance, when a Doctor so bethumps
What he denominates the "forcing system,'
Nobody asks him about forcing-pumps !†

Oh say, with hand on heart,

Suppose that I should start
Some theory like this:
"When Genesis

* 4282. Do many young men visit those houses?-A very great many have done, more so than what visit the regular public-houses. I was in one of those places about twelve months ago, waiting for a coach, and there came into the beer-shop twenty-two boys, who called for half a gallon of ale, which they drank, and then they called for another.

‡ 1211. The over-stimulation, which too frequently ends in the habit of drunkenness in Great Britain in every class, is the result of the British forcing system simply.

Was written, before man became a glutton,
And in his appetites ran riot,

Content with simple vegetable diet,

Eating his turnips without leg of mutton,
His spinach without lamb, carrots sans beef,
"Tis my belief

He was a polypus, and I'm convinced

Made other men when he was hashed or minced ;
Did I in such a style as this proceed,
Would you not say I was Farre gone, indeed?

Excuse me, if I doubt at each Assize
How sober it would look in public eyes,

For our King's Counsel and our learned Judges,
When trying thefts, assaults, frauds, murders, arsons,
To preach from texts of temperance like parsons,
By way of giving tipplers gentle nudges.
Imagine my Lord Bayley, Parke, or Park,†
Donning the fatal sable cap, and hark-
"These sentences must pass, howe'er I'm panged,
You Brandy must return-and Rum the same-
To the Goose and Gridiron, whence you came-
Gin !-Reverend Mr. Cotton and Jack Ketch
Your spirit jointly will despatch-
Whiskey be hanged !”

* 1282. Was not vegetable food prescribed in the first chapter of Genesis? -Vegetable food was appointed when the restorative power of man was complete. The restorative power in some of the lower animals is still complete. If a polypus be truncated or cut into several pieces, each part will become a perfect animal.- Vide Evidence of Dr. Farre.

+975. What happy opportunities, for example, are offered to cach Judge and King's Counsellor at every Assize to denounce all customary use of distilled spirit, as the great excitement to crime. The proper improvement of such opportunities would do much for temperance.