I have read scores of prophecies that England
Was trembling on the very verge of ruin,
Delivered in the senate of our country,
Where wisdom sits enthroned in solemn wigs,
And holiness expands in sleeves of lawn —
That Roman Catholics would swallow England
If they should ever obtain Emancipation —
That Parliament would be unchristianised
If Jews were eligible to sit as members —
That the Established Church would be uprooted,
And trail its sacred glories in the dust.
If ever low Dissenters were allowed
To share its honours and its privileges —
That land would soon go out of cultivation.
And landlords be inevitably ruined,
And everybody else be ruined with them,



THE SETTING SUN. 297

If the Starvation Corn Laws were repealed —

That Free Trade would enrich the foreigner,

And beggar us by freeing us of trade —

That the cheap labour of the serfs of Tambof

Would lower the wages of our working men,

And swamp our markets with a flood of corn —

That parliamentary reform was something

So very dreadful, that our Constitution

In Church and State — our glorious Constitution —

Must tumble headlong, and be swept away

By an inundation of the working classes,

If ever reform in Parliament were granted !

I wonder very much how many times

They have told us that the sun of England's glory

Was on the point of setting — to rise no more !

These prophecies spring up like morning mush-
rooms
From the pestiferous soil that suits them best.
