The End.
The Slap, at first arranged in the manner, and in every respect in imitation, assumed the appearance of a newspaper, except that the columns were broken by cuts. It was a crown broadside, and the agreeable appearance of the stamp was preserved by the subjoined diagram being placed at the corner.
Doubtless every one who entered into the design, was satisfied with the original form of the publication; yet the author has been perplexed by numerous applications for an edition in this size. He finds it as difficult to account for want of taste as for it; but it being the fashion for the minority to be polite to the majority, he bends at last to the too general request, and submits The Slap, with a broken spirit, to go down, bound, with his other little pieces.
45, Ludgate Hill,
Original Address
A Bag of political nuts ready cracked, is not only rather dangerous fare to serve up, but a man who takes the trouble to crack them, will find the kernels cleaner and sweeter for his pains. Though they who run may read the greater portion of the present sheet, yet there are a few articles that require attention, and two or three arc designed for those only who alone can understand them.
My first intention was to parody Slop's paper, 'The Slop-tail,' or 'Much Times,' throughout. But he is as vapid as the Marquess of Lunnunderry. * What could I do with thoughts as unquotable, as confused, as ill conceived, as ill expressed, as that puissante ** Lord's —without depth or originality—as plentiful and superficial as duck-weed.
I found not a sparkle of talent in any of Slop's lean 'leaders' to re-pay me the trouble of wearisome reading. Under the 'stringent necessity' of varying my original plan, yet loth to abandon it altogether, I have parodied some of the features common to the Slop-pail, and supplied the department I had allotted to an imitation of his mindless verbiage with a sketch of his Life—filling the remainder of the sheet in my own way. There are discrepancies inseparable from this course, but I write to good-humoured readers, who have no objection to see the mind as well as the person of a friend in undress, and who take as little interest in the decision of the High Court of Criticism on things of this sort, as they took in the decision of the 'Court of Claims' concerning the 'imposing' ceremony of the coronation, and things of that sort.,
The drawings are, as usual, by Mr. George Cruikshank, whose able pencil has had greater scope here than in a pamphlet; that size would have entirely excluded Dr. Southey's Vision, the
Jack-in-the-Green, and the masterly representation of the Bridge-street gang destroying a Free Press, and suspending Liberty, while Slop is working his Press to distort and torture Truth.
THE LIFE OF DOCTOR SLOP,
The origin and the end of this man are alike uncertain. He was sent to Oxford when young, as a student destined for holy orders, under the patronage of the Bishop of Durham.
'Go thou and seek the house of prayer:
Where storied windows dim the doubtful day;
These lines, in Mr. Southey's lyric poem, 'written on Sunday Morning,' * express the thoughts of Slop when a college youth.
At that time he had a sort of conscience; for, in consequence of an honest course of reading, he refused to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles. Thus disqualifying himself from being a candidate for the 'imposition of hands' by the Bishop, he for ever relinquished the prospect of entrance into the church, and cultivated his mind by reading Paine's Rights of Man.
Fascinated by the writings of Mrs. Mary Wollstoncrofft, more especially by her celebrated 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman,' he assiduously sought that lady's acquaintance, and having obtained the desired honour, cultivated her intimacy with passionate admiration. On the appearance of Mr. Godwin's 'Inquiry concerning Moral and Political Justice,' he read and studied it with doting enthusiasm; the chapters on Property, and on the Sexual Intercourse, were particularly to his taste—the chapter on Sincerity, not so much. Hungering for a personal friendship with the author of the Political Justice, who became the husband of Mrs. Wollstoncrofft, he humbled himself before him, beseeching permission to consider that philosopher as his Gamaliel, and to sit at his feet as the least of his disciples. This was granted, and in that school he commenced an intimacy with Mr. Thomas Holcroft and his friends. That gentleman had just been released from imprisonment, under indictments for high treason, with Messrs. Hardy, Horne Tooke, and Thelwall, who were tried and acquitted of the charge; and at this time Slop's political fervor rose above the temperament of the most hot-blooded among the patriots he associated with. It had been fashionable to wear the hair long and. tied; he thought this aristocratic, cut his hair off to look like a democrat, became a round-head, and was called Citizen S. At length he was marked out from his fellows by the distinguishing appellation of 'the Jacobin,' and he became a Leveller. Affixing to the words 'Liberty and Equality,' an interpretation of his own, he contended with the Spenceans, that there could be no real Liberty without Equality so he preached the doctrine of all things in common; and prevailed on a young man who had imbibed some of his notions, to aid him in proving its advantages. In an attic chamber in the Temple they founded a community of goods—lived on short commons —and waited on each other. Here Slop lighted the fire, and fetched water from the Temple pump for their joint use, till, tired of the pitcher-duty, he proposed transferring the undignified office to his companion, who declined to accept it; and a fierce quarrel arising in this 'perfect state of society,' concerning rights and duties, the Commonwealth of two ceased to exist.
In this exigency, moderation, which at one time he seems to have thought criminal, became expedient on many accounts. About 1796 he visited Scotland, with letters of recommendation to respectable society; yet his wild opinions on religion and politics caused him to be disliked by some of the most respectable students who held Whig principles, and who, still holding them, dislike and shun him now for his extreme violence in another direction. When at Edinburgh, he affected singularity of habit as well as thought, and paraded the streets, especially the Leith-Walk, in a drab dress of romantic simplicity. On his return from Scotland, he employed himself in writing for the booksellers. In 1798 he translated the play of Don Carlos, from the German of Schiller, and presented his friend, Mr. Holcroft, with a copy, who says, that 'he executed his task respectably.' * On the 5th of August, in that year, he dined with Mr. Godwin and Mr. Parry (the Republican Editor of the Courier Newspaper when it was conducted on democratic principles), at the house of Mr. Holcroft, where, according to that gentleman's diary, ** he was, 'as usual, acute; but pertinacious and verbose. On the 25th of November, he wrote to Mr. Holcroft, complaining of neglect, *** who answered by denying such intention; and indeed his intimacy with the coterie at Mr. Holcroft's, was of the closest nature, and his attachment to that philosopher's principles and person so strong, that he proposed intermarriage with his family, which was declined. He remained ardently devoted to the new philosophy, long after Mr. Holcroft's death, and until Mr. Godwin found it convenient to decline his wearisome acquaintance. Fickleness and obstinacy, and the exercise of a faculty for incessant disputation, rendered his society very tedious to the philosophers. Fruitless attempts to repress or soften his pugnacious turn, exhausted their patience. In defence of themselves, they disregarded and finally cut him;—so that it became the New Times with him in philosophy.
He rambled to conceal his discontent, and to get fresh notions and fresh friends. A pedestrian tour through Scotland, with letters of recommendation, and a pliability of manner accommodated to his new views, effected both. He published his Tour in 1801. It is written with extreme caution. His real opinions are kept out of the book as much as possible; yet they occasionally peep forth; for instance, he says, 'We seem inspired with enthusiasm to fall down and worship the golden image of commerce; let us not wholly submit our feelings to our purses, and counters, and ledgers—we may be very rich in products, and manufactures, and population, and very poor in the spirits and minds of men!' *—he dare not put that in his Slop-pail. In the Tour, he speaks in praise of the Rev. Sir Henry Moscreiff
Wellwood, a Scottish Baronet of Whig principles, whose daughter he afterwards married, whether from innate love of legitimacy, or what, is unknown. Before he wrote the Tour, he procured the degree of LL.D. (as the Laureate has done since), and the philosopher, who had refused subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles to the Church of England, and had been in turn a Republican, a Jacobin, a Leveller, and a Spencean, became a Doctor of Laws, and sunk into the wig and gown of an advocate in the Ecclesiastical Court! Resuming an intimacy with some young men of his own stamp, who knew him at college, they obtained a place for him—he was made king's advocate at Malta. So fell Slop. Here ended his career of what he called Patriotism. He mistook passionate heat for the enthusiasm of genius, a habit of loud talking for talent, a ranting way of writing for reasoning, and pertinacity of manner for firmness of character. His vain disputations occasioned him to be noticed, and this he thought equal to being admired. Conceit of ability rendered him covetous of distinction; he acquired it—
The smirks and smiles of courtiers, the tinsel and glitter of embroidered coats and waistcoats, the hum and sops- of office, hurried him into the train of ministerial menials, as easily as a beggar's hungry brat is seduced by the finery of gilt paper, and the sound of the shovel and brush, to follow the chimney-sweepers on May-day, through the dirty alleys of St. Giles's. His artificial wants were too many to be gratified by an even walk in the path of rectitude. When he saw that 'public principle' was an obstacle to the gratification of his vulgar vanity, he suppressed it—
Notwithstanding this, he remained, secretly, a correspondent to the Monthly Magazine, and wrote for Sir Richard Phillips.
Vacating his place at Malta in favour of his brother-in-law, and coming back to seek his fortune, he scrambled about during a year and a half, in Doctors' Commons and among the booksellers, in search of employment, till he procured an engagement from the proprietors of The Times as a writer in that journal. His labours in this way were ardent, but profitable to nobody but himself. On the return of Napoleon from Elba, the ex-republican became an admirer of privileged orders, and 'the right divine of kings to govern wrong'—glorified the thrones of the allied despots—fell flat on his face in worship of legitimacy—and affected a beatific vision of the political millenium in the restoration of the Bourbons. He soon honoured Napoleon with all the obnoxious designations the language could supply. He called him 'a villain, a wretch, a rebel, a brigand, a traitor, a fiend, a felon, an incendiary, an impostor, an assassin, a viper, a demon, a fool, a living Moloch, a bloody dog, and a blackamoor.' * To these and hundreds of other names, he prefixed innumerable epithets expressive of disgust and hate. Every one but himself saw that such a course must shortly end. The writer of this article being forcibly reminded of the cursing of Trim in Tristram Shandy, ridiculed Slop's Execratory, in a little piece intituled 'Buonaparte -phobia; or, Cursing made Easy, &c. by Dr. Slop.' * It not only insured to him the name of SLOP for ever, but hastened what was neither intended nor anticipated, his dismissal from The Times.
The persecution of the French Protestants on the restoration of Louis XVIII. and their massacre at Nismes, occasioned the English Protestants to interest themselves heartily for their relief. The Committee of Dissenters at Dr, Williams's Library in Red-Cross-street inquired into the facts, published a verifying Report, and took measures for sending pecuniary succours. Seeking to earn the wages of his prostitution by slavering the hoof of tyranny, and maddened that Bourbon bigotry should be obstructed in its operation, Slop denied the truth of the statements, vilified the whole body of English Dissenters, imputed their humanity to unworthy and scandalous motives, and threw as many daring fabrications as his mercenary pen could create in the way of their efforts. With undaunted audacity he gave the lie direct to his father-in-law, Sir Henry Moncreiff Wellwood, who, in the kindness and courage of his heart, became President of a Public Meeting at Edinburgh, and inspirited the Protestants of Scotland to co-operate in a national subscription for the persecuted. When Slop's slanders were successfully repelled, and his artful falsehoods exposed, he withdrew without evidencing any other regret than what arose from his having been unable to effect his unhallowed purposes.
His first exploit after his expulsion from The Times was, an attempt to delude the public by engrafting himself upon a quacking newspaper, now known, like himself, by a two-fold name, it being indiscriminately called 'The Muck Times,' and 'The Slop Pail.' The imposition succeeded only with a few. His writing gave the lie direct to his puffing pretensions, and his falsehoods were exposed in the paper from which he had been discharged. * He knows full well,' says The Times ( in February, 18]7) that 'his articles were rejected from our columns on account of the virulence and indiscretion with which they were written; and that, for more than twelve months preceding, whatever articles attracted notice by their merit, were exclusively the productions of other gentlemen.—There are in the office, sacks full of his rejected writings; which, if they were published, would exhibit an accurate criterion of his puffed-off abilities; the sale of our Journal increased the more, the less he wrote; and since he has ceased from writing altogether, has extended with a rapidity of which we have known no example, since we have had the management of it. This and other statements were stunning blows to him, and remained unnoticed, because they were unanswerable.
His overweening pride received another shock through his new friends the legitimates. He went to Paris, and applied to be introduced at court; but 'The Bourbon' refused to receive him! Yes! refused to receive him—Slop; that Slop who, to gain the favour of his Most Christian Majesty, when he was in England, had 'tainted himself with the plague-spot of Legitimacy, till he was leprous all over; in whose inmost soul it had fixed its mortal sting, and, like an ugly spider, entangled him in its slimy folds, brooding on him as on its own poison.' ** He—who had abandoned principle, was abandoned by friends, had incurred the world's contempt, and had sold himself to the devil in the service of legitimacy—he to be refused permission to bow over the hand of Louis XVIII!—he to be despised and rejected by that same Louis who had received Mr. Street, the late Editor of the Courier, with open arms, and conferred on him the order of the Lys!—this was the unkindest cut of all! He returned to England in the last stage of mortification—a bye-word—a reproach—a laughing stock!
Harnessed with other hacks to the machine of tyranny, he must answer to the lash of the driver, and drag it along, or be trampled over. Smack went the whip, and on went Slop. To support the new order of things in France, it was necessary, in addition to the bayonets of foreigners, that the press there should be put under a censorship, and that the free press of England should make a monstrous experiment to write up the advantages of a shackled press in France. Dr. Slop undertook the task, and joining to himself another Doctor, the Poet Laureate, they united with persons of similar qualifications in France, and commenced operations by announcing a publication called the 'Correspondent,' which was to appear at London in the English, and at Paris in the French language on the same day. It was conducted on the plan of a 'Class-meeting' among the Methodists, where each relates his 'experience.' But neither the French nor the English cared a sous about the political 'experience' of Doctor Slop, Doctor Southey, or the mad Viscount Chateaubriand. Besides, the Poet Laureate, instead of telling his own 'experience,' told, a long story about the Rev. John Wesley's, while Slop came 'lumbering like a bear up,' and Chateaubriand illustrated the affairs of Europe with tales about the city of Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, and the Crown of Thorns. The 'Correspondent' fell still-born amid the laughter of the few people of both nations who knew of its coming forth, and perhaps there are only five persons in England who remember it even by name—Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, who had the honour of the profit and loss account.
Devoid of political principle, Slop's real source of action is pure selfishness. His end and aim are antisocial, because his Slop-pail can only exist during political strife. He would inflame the passions of ministers and their minions, to vex and to harass the people, that the people may be irritated into resistance against persecution. He and his fellow-laboureres vilified and goaded whole communities of starving manufacturers. These unhappy men, congregated and organized into powerful bodies, simultaneously demanding a redress of wrongs and grievances, he exultingly recorded to have been dispersed and cut down by the sabres of the military —but not until he had so altered and 'garnished' the account of the massacre, furnished him by Orton, * as to make it pleasing to the depraved taste of his mindless readers, and serviceable to the political views of his base supporters. This was his harvest; but he has reaped that, and is sowing another.
Pending the prosecution of the Queen, the Rev. Solomon Piggott, Curate of St. James's, Clerkenwell, and St. Antholin's, Watling-Street, a man of weak and restless mind, conceived the idea of publishing Caricatures, by Public Subscription, in ridicule of her Majesty and her supporters. He communicated this design to Dr. Slop, who engaged heartily in the plan. Subscribers were advertised for, and were formed into a body, called 'The Loyal Association,' and Mr. Charles Bicknell, of No. 3, Spring Garden Terrace, the Solicitor to the Admiralty, was the Treasurer. Piggott wrote maudlin prose and wretched verse, and illustrated his unintellectual labours with coloured caricatures. These were issued to the world through a Publisher of Obscenity, while they were powerfully puffed by Slop in his Slop-pail, and Piggott himself cringed, his way to Court, and presented the talentless trash to his Majesty in person, who received it most graciously; and, as an encouragement to his labours, subscribed for forty sets of one of his works at a guinea each. But the public judgment refused the rinsings of the sycophant parson's brain; and the united efforts of 'the Loyal Association' being inadequate to produce a single article of ability from the press, they turned their thoughts towards an attack upon the Press itself. They were deplorably 'poor in the spirits and minds of men,' but 'their purses, and counters, and ledgers,' were productive, and at one of their meetings they abandoned the project of a Series of Publications, and determined to commence a Series of Prosecutions. The notorious John Reeves, a plentifully-endowed placeman, who had thrown the country into a state of alarm by a Loyal Association in 1793, entered into these views; but, as the term Loyal had acquired an unfavourable odour, they changed their name from 'the Loyal Association,' to 'the Constitutional Association.' Piggott's Treasurer, Mr. Bicknell, with John Reeves (both lawyers), got Sir John Sewell (also a lawyer), a pensioner in the Red Book, to become the president of the confederacy. They appointed Charles Murray (another lawyer), their 'Honorary Secretary', a very acceptable post to a hungry attorney, who had quartered part of his family in public situations. He eagerly embraced the office of their Old-Bailey Solicitor; it brought him fees, and perhaps he expected it might bring him clients. They were joined by Longueville Clarke (also a lawyer), and the son of a person holding an appointment in a Government Establishment. John Poynder (also a lawyer) resident in Bridewell, to which, as well as Bethlem (two other Government Establishments), he is Clerk and Attorney, had been compelled to resign his office of Secretary to the Bible Society, and was at full leisure to become an active confederate. Intercourse with the prisoners in Newgate had given a certain turn to his views; a drinker of port wine himself, he had descanted, before a Committee of the House of Commons, on the wickedness of common gin; with a good comfortable house over his head, at the public expense, he had disturbed poor old apple-women who sought an independent living 'in summer's heat and winter's cold he had also a horror, upon public principle, of street organs in the evening; and, like his friend Slop, he had experienced the mortification of having his defamatory, and 'mewling and puling' writings rejected by 'The Times'—the new concern was quite to his taste. Slop (himself a lawyer) became the Horn-boy of the Gang,—to blow the 'great news,' the 'extraordinary new's,' of their proceedings—to puff their attacks upon the Free Press of the People—to assist in raising the flame of alarm throughout the country—and to give the earliest intelligence of their Prosecutions. This paid Slop well, for the trouble he had with Parson Solomon, in laying the Plot; for, as the adherents to it increased, they took especial care to give their support and influence to the hireling paper, from whence Slop derives the means of supporting his tawdry existence. By these measures, the weak-minded were terrified out of subscriptions for anti-social objects; and the selfish crew having gathered around them the chief priests, and the pharisees, and some of the fattest amongst the placeholders, pensioners, and tax-eaters, who exist upon the people's labour, they fitted up an office at Walker's Hotel, No. 6, New Bridge Street, Blackfriars, for the purpose of more conveniently carrying on the imposture. From this 'Den' they put forth a specious Address, which is rendered into pretty intelligible language in subsequent pages of this publication. *
In that paper these conspirators, battening upon the public purse, and preying upon public credulity, knavishly affected to lament 'a perversion of public principle and, with their fingers twitching at the purse-strings of their dupes, hypocritically whispered in their ears about 'mockery of religion!'—like the hacknied procuress who, to effect her designs upon innocence, pretends an extraordinary affection for virtue. What shameful pimping to the whiffling understandings of the timid! What artful pandering to pampered bloatedness! What an insolent appeal from the minions of power, and the overgorged feeders upon the public wealth, to their fellow parasites and gluttons! How dare they to talk of 'public principle? whose weight increases that enormous burthen of taxation which depresses the labourer to the very earth, and enters as iron into the soul of every industrious man in the country—how dare they to talk of 'public principle.' Then as to their cant about 'mockery of religion'—suppose the writer of this article had published at his house, 45, Ludgate-hill, the following—
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Suppose that William Hone had published this, what would Slop and the other Members of the Bridge-Street Gang, and Charles Murray, and Joseph Budworth Sharp, and Slop's Readers, have said? But William Hone did not publish this. No. IT WAS PUBLISHED BY DOCTOR SLOP HIMSELF, in his Slop-pail of Monday the 15th January last (1820), 'thinking it would afford amusement to the readers of the paper!' *
Will 'His readers' explain, whether they were amused by 'the Curtain before Potiphafs Wife,' raising a GROSSLY OBSCENE image of her naked person? Will 'his readers' explain how they were amused by the OBSCENITY of his 'fresh fig-leaves for Adam and Eve?' Will 'his readers' explain, what suggestions were conveyed to their minds by 'a Fresh Witch of Endor,' and by 'Six strings for David's Harp?'—that harp to which the Psalms were sung, that have rolled on to us in the full majesty of poetical grandeur during successive generations, and will continue their choral pealing to the loftiest feelings of the human heart, till they, and the music of the spheres, shall cease together.
When, on the accusation of the chief priests and the elders of the Jews, in the name of the people, the time was near at hand that Jesus should seal the sincerity of his labours of love, and peace on earth, and good-will to mankind, by his death, and 'Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it. **—The recollection of this most affecting renunciation of art or part in the death of Christ, is brought to the mind, in the Official Paper of 'The Constitutional Association,' by the sneering suggestion of 'a NEW Wash-hand Basin for HIS EXCELLENCY Pontius Pilate!'