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 in black like mourning for our mischance;

if we live as long as may, that’s to say, through the hard winter and pinching weather,

for i don’t see how we’re to earn enough to keep body and soul together.

i only wish mr. wilberforce or some of them that pities the niggers,

would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable starving figures,

a-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each other,

and a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking father and mother.

they haven’t a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread and needles,

but crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of common black beadles.

if they’d only inquired before passing the act and taken a few such peeps,

i don’t think that any real gentleman would have set his face against sweeps.

climbin’s an ancient respectable art, and if history’s of any vally,

was recommended by queen elizabeth to the great sir walter raleigh,

when he wrote on a pane of glass how i’d climb, if the way i only knew,

and she writ beneath, if your heart’s afeard, don’t venture up the flue.

as for me i was always loyal, and respected all powers that are higher,

[pg 172]

but how can i now say god save the king, if i an’t to be a cryer?

there’s london milk, that’s one of the cries, even on sunday the law allows,

but ought black sweeps, that are human beasts, to be worser off than black cows?

do we go calling about, when it’s church time, like the noisy billingsgate vermin,

and disturb the parson with “all alive o!” in the middle of a funeral sermon?

but the fish won’t keep, not the mackarel won’t, is the cry of the parliament elves,

every thing, except the sweeps i think, is to be allowed to keep themselves!

lord help us! what’s to become of us if we mustn’t cry no more?

we shan’t do for black mutes to go a standing at a death’s door.

[pg 173]

and we shan’t do to emigrate, no not even to the hottentot nations,

for as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our situations!

and we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve ladies of quality nimbly,

for when we we’re drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large frills, all clean and neat, and white silk stockings, if they pleased to desire us to sweep the hearth, we couldn’t resist the chimbley.