1795 19
1795.19
The Weird Jacobins
Anon
The Tomahawk (November 2, 1795)
Scene, Palace Yard. Thunder and Lightning.
Enter F-x, Th-lw-ll, and Sh—n.[1]
TH-LW-LL.
When shall we three meet again?
In Plunder, Murder, or in Slain?
F-X.
When the JACOBINS are done.
When th' ADDRESS is lost and won!
SH—N.
That will be ere morning sun.
TH-LW-LL.
Where the place?
F-X.
Upon these stones.
SH—N.
There we'll all meet Surgeon JONES.[2]
TH-LW-LL.
I come, I come, D'ESPARD,[3] now!
F-X.
ST-NH—E[4] calls———anon!
ALL.
F-x, is foul, and foul is F-x!
Keep clear of GUILLOTINES and BLOCKS!
[They walk across the pavement, and run away.]
Notes
1. Charles Fox, John Thelwall, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan all opposed the war with France.
2. John Gale Jones, the "shabby, genteel" surgeon, was a radical extremist who threatened Pitt with public execution. See The Farington Diary, ed. J. Greig (London, 1922), I, 118-119.
3. Colonel Edmund Despard, an Irishman, was a member of the Committee of the London Corresponding Society. A violent revolutionary, Despard attempted to form an army amongst the working classes to overthrow the government. He was finally sentenced to the gallows in 1802 for conspiring with discontent military.