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]

When shall we three meet again?
In Plunder, Murder, or in Slain?

When the JACOBINS are done.
When th' ADDRESS is lost and won!

That will be ere morning sun.

Where the place?

Upon these stones.

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.

4. Earl Stanhope, a Whig leader opposed to the war.