The Injur’d Ghost of Liberty

To his Grace the Duke of Grafton

My Lord,

I shall make no apology for troubling your Grace with this my farewell letter, intending soon to quit the field of politics for the sweeter and more happy retirement into the country, there to cultivate my vine at my sabine farm. Your Grace I suppose will also relax your mind from that weight of incessant complaint from a disturbed, uneasy people; great have been their sufferings, little has been their redress. The law of the land has been set aside to make way for the imperial sway of the will of a despotic administration, prone to the invention of every mischief that can befal the nation. Our constitution is no more, our rights are gone; the times of Charles the First seem now to blend themselves with the absurdities and cruelties of Charles the Second; nor can I think it true that the arbitrary principles of the former could ever have been centered in the descendants of the latter. Your Grace’s private character shall ever remain unattached by me. My friend Junius, whose deep piercing pen is so far superior to mine, and to every other writer of this age, has lately endeavoured to trace out the fountain head, so that it would be needless for any one to attempt it, was he inclined to deduce natural causes, and to find the spring from whence those sulpherous qualities in the current proceed. I mean to paint only at those who have been the advisers in the late unconstitutional proceedings; I say unconstitutional, because I can never bring myself to think that Mr. Lutterell is the chosen representative of the county of Middlesex, or ever intended so to be by the electors; and therefore I call it a breach of the laws of this constitution.

Times are only quiet now because the people sink under the weight of misfortunes; and what can the tame voice of reason do, when borne down by the high hand of power?

I have frequently wished your Grace had no concern with the Barbary tribe, and have often thought that a connection in the political system with Lord Temple and Chatham might have once more shifted you from pillar to post to enjoy the sweets of a fresh attachment: however forsaken of forsaking, you have at last riveted your political nail with a conubial stroke, and drove it home to the head. Such a piece of policy will, you apprehend, effectually secure you against a northern nipping blast, and the possession of a virgin in the house of Bond will amply compensate all the fatiguing trips that your Grace has made through every sign in the political hemisphere. I am in hopes now that some administration may be from hence formed that will be a little more permanent than the weather. But, alas! are we to expect, that from the hasty haughty Barbary tribe? I could wish steadiness to honest measures was to be found there; but imagine that their strength is alone depended upon them, both for the command of the closet to obtain measures suitable to their despotic wills, and for the obedience of a complying Parliament.

If by such strength a permanency is to be attained, the crown and the kingdom will soon change; nor shall we then think much of these times, though now ever so loudly complained. Hardships and misfortunes, shall we judge so in this age, will then be thought even mercies and pleasures.

Now, my Lord, when sometimes laws are relaxed for vitiated purposes, at other times cruelly stretched beyond their strength; when the whole system of government is not consistent with the genius of the people, is it not to be supposed that Law and Liberty has forsook the land; and though drove out from among the wicked, will for ever haunt the place of its nativity in some Ghost-like form or other, which cannot bear to quit the land without recompense made to the injured shade, and when children talk of apparitions, nothing is so common as for the Sprights to appear. Look you, my Lord, I think I see already the injured Ghost of Liberty at the Bar of the House of Commons to come tell the Tale of 1769.

The Injured Ghost of liberty in 1769 at the Bar of the H— of C—

I.
1 When all was closed in dreadful night,
2 And most things wish’d repose,
3 Forth from it’s tomb the ghastly spright
4 Of Liberty arose.
II.
5 Her features all benumb’d with woe,
6 Her skin was pale with care,
7 Her languid limbs were parch’d with grief,
8 That once so pliant were.
III.
9 With mournful step to find her spouse,
10 And seek for Freedom there,
11 She wander’d to that fatal House
12 From whence her sorrows are.
IV.
13 She touch’d the Bar, and gave a groan,
14 Bid Serjeant hold her shroud;
15 She look’d about, and shook her head,
16 And thus bewail’d aloud:
V.
17 Mr. Speaker, I came here to wish,
18 With patience you wou’d hear,
19 ’Tis Plaintiff Liberty that speaks,
20 The House would lend an ear.
VI.
21 Hear, hear — then see the breathless form,
22 Which thy misdeeds have brought,
23 Hear, hear — behold that empty shade
24 Which thy misjudgements wrought.
VII.
25 Look here, and see the piteous shape
26 That once was fond to live:
27 Say, monsters, why did ye destroy
28 That life ye’re here to give.
VIII.
29 The methods took were horrid foul,
30 Through Bute and Grafton’s will,
31 The Prince bid the Dame to know,
32 She wou’d be ruler still.
IX.
33 Let Bute himself be forc’d to see
34 The deadly waste he’s made
35 To blast the fruit that’s Britain’s growth
36 In Liberty’s fair mead.
X.
37 Then let him feel with tortur’d heart
38 The stroke he lately gave,
39 For Britons will lament the deed,
40 And rue it to their grave.
XI.
41 This foreign Princess vow’d revenge
42 On Wilkes’s cursed plot,
43 Nor wou’d she rest one night or day
44 Till full revenge she got.
XII.
45 Then Grafton came, and promised much
46 If Grenville would firmly stand,
47 He’d carry through the wrongs begun
48 With high despotic hand.
XIII.
49 How cou’d ye (none but ye could do)
50 Cut off my bloom so soon,
51 And let my lasting night come on
52 Amid its perfect noon.
XIV.
53 Hear, hear — Thus fell that Bulwark Law
54 Which held me fast in hand,
55 And with it dragg’d me to its grave,
56 And bade me leave the land.
XV.
57 Here then I stand, and firmly ask
58 What right ye had to act
59 And judge against the well known law
60 Of freedom and of fact.
XVI.
61 What then is gain’d by Blackstone’s Book,
62 Or cull’d from Nugent’s Law,
63 When contradicted by themselves,
64 It matters not a straw.
XVII.
65 The Treasury band led up the van;
66 Then they were sure to win,
67 The major part went out with North,
68 The Minor staid within.
XVIII.
69 How can ye vow a Patriot part,
70 And yet that vow forsake;
71 How cou’d ye think to win my heart,
72 Yet cause that Heart to break.
XIX.
73 Why did ye tell to all the world
74 Their freedom you’d protect;
75 Yet truly prove those gilded words
76 To be of none effect.
XX.
77 Oft have I heard this house declare,
78 That Liberty should live,
79 When by your wounding words you mean
80 Nought else but to deceive.
XXI.
81 Oft have I on my bended knee
82 Submissive come to know
83 Your will — what not? — to please that will
84 Been forc’d to undergo.
XXII.
85 Where are the few who lov’d me dear?
86 Have they forsook the land?
87 Sure they have not been brib’d by gold,
88 Nor bought by Grafton’s hand.
XXIII.
89 Yes, yes, the tale is surely true,
90 Or else no force cou’d do’t;
91 For Britain’s Liberty to fall
92 A sacrifice to Bute.
XXIV.
93 Where are those men who dar’d destroy
94 The Nation’s right and mine;
95 To Bute — the sacrifice was made,
96 The shame O Grafton’s thine.
XXV.
97 What more, ye Fiends, ye’d wish to do?
98 What treach’rous ills impart?
99 ’Twas you, Two hundred twenty-two,
100 That stabb’d me to the heart.
XXVI.
101 The tribe of law stept forth, and took
102 Those wicked deeds in hand,
103 Decreed the law of Parliament,
104 Is law for all the land.
XXVII.
105 The Freeman’s vote was soon destroy’d,
106 And with it went his right;
107 The greater number was the less,
108 The lesser chose the Knight.
XXVIII.
109 Thus was I slain, and thus I fell,
110 O curs’d decree of law,
111 Thus from the Kingdom I’m ordain’d
112 For ever to withdraw.
XXIX.
113 The Nation lov’d me to the heart,
114 And I to it belong’d,
115 But parted thus by shameful act,
116 The Kingdom has been wrong’d.
XXX.
117 Why for such hardship was I nurs’d
118 In Britain’s fairest Isle
119 Or say perfidious why these limbs
120 Were suffer’d thus to spoil.
XXXI.
121 Pause on the wicked deeds ye’ve done. —
122 Dream of the fatal change!
123 Your crimes are number’d in the book
124 Which Justice shall avenge.
XXXII.
125 Say, where your wicked souls will lodge,
126 When from your bodies fled!
127 Think on those pangs ye’re soon to feel
128 In that tormenting bed!
XXXIII.
129 May Spectres stare ye in the face!
130 May horrors guard ye round!
131 May conscience ne’er forsake such fiends,
132 But all your thoughts confound!
XXXIV.
133 Let Ægypt’s plague invent distress,
134 And every art to teaze,
135 Till every Briton’s wrong redress’d,
136 Ne’er let those torments cease.
XXXV.
137 I am a ghost ’tis true, you see,
138 I come to haunt the House;
139 Your wicked deeds have wrought the change,
140 A lion to a mouse.
XXXVI.
141 But hark! the midnight Bell has toll’d,
142 To call me to my Home;
143 Atone for this your black offence, —
144 Remember me when gone!
Veridicus

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About this text

Title (in Source Edition): The Injur’d Ghost of Liberty
Author: Thomas Paine
Themes:
Genres: allegory
Headnote: Whitehall Evening Post, 10–12 June 1769/Public Advertiser, 12 June 1769

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Cleary, Scott M., ed. Claeys, Gregory, gen. ed. Thomas Paine Collected Writings. Vol. II. Part 2: Poetry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2026. 5 Volumes.

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