Well, here’s a pretty go! here’s a Gagging Act, if ever there was a gagging!
But I’m bound the members as silenced us, in doing it had plenty of magging.
They had better send us all off, they had, to the School for the Deaf and Dumb,
[Pg 169]
To unlarn us our mother tongues, and to make signs and be regularly mum.
But they can’t undo natur—as sure as ever the morning begins to peep,
Directly I open my eyes, I can’t help calling out Sweep
As natural as the sparrows among the chimbley-pots that say Cheep!
For my own part I find my suppress’d voice very uneasy,
And comparable to nothing but having your tissue stopt when you are sneezy.
Well, it’s all up with us! tho’ I suppose we mustn’t cry all up.
Here’s a precious merry Christmas, I’m blest if I can earn either bit or sup!
If crying Sweep, of mornings, is going beyond quietness’s border,
Them as pretends to be fond of silence oughtn’t to cry hear, hear, and order, order.
I wonder Mr. Sutton, as we’ve sut-on too, don’t sympathise with us
As a Speaker what don’t speak, and that’s exactly our own cus.
God help us if we don’t not cry, how are we to pursue our callings?
I’m sure we’re not half so bad as other businesses with their bawlings.
For instance, the general postmen, that at six o’clock go about ringing,
And wake up all the babbies that their mothers have just got to sleep with singing.
Greens oughtn’t to be cried no more than blacks—to do the unpartial job,
If they bring in a Sooty Bill, they ought to have brought in a Dusty Bob.
Is a dustman’s voice more sweet than ourn, when he comes a seeking arter the cinders,
[Pg 170]
Instead of a little boy like a blackbird in spring, singing merrily under your windows?
There’s the omnibus cads as plies in Cheapside, and keeps calling out Bank and City;
Let his Worship, the Mayor, decide if our call of Sweep is not just as pretty.
I can’t see why the Jews should be let go about crying Old Close thro their hooky noses,
And Christian laws should be ten times more hard than the old stone laws of Moses.
Why isn’t the mouths of the muffin-men compell’d to be equally shut?
Why, because Parliament members eat muffins, but they never eat no sut.
[Pg 171]
Next year there won’t be any May-day at all, we shan’t have no heart to dance,
And Jack in the Green will go............