Oh Mr. Malthus, I agree
In everything I read with thee!
The world’s too full, there is no doubt,
And wants a deal of thinning out,—
It’s plain—as plain as Harrow Steeple—
And I agree with some thus far,
Who say the Queen’s too popular,
That is,—she has too many people.
There are too many of all trades,
Too many bakers,
Too many every-thing-makers,
But not too many undertakers,—
Too many boys,—
Too many hobby-de-hoys,—
Too many girls, men, widows, wives and maids,—
There is a dreadful surplus to demolish,
And yet some Wrongheads,
With thick not long heads,
Poor Metaphysicians!
Sign petitions
Capital punishment to abolish;
And in the face of censuses such vast ones
New hospitals contrive,
For keeping life alive,
Laying first stones, the dolts! instead of last ones!
Others, again, in the same contrariety,
Deem that of all Humane Society
They really deserve thanks,
Because the two banks of the Serpentine,
By their design,
Are Saving Banks.
Oh! were it given but to me to weed
The human breed,
And root out here and there some cumbering elf,
I think I could go through it,
And really do it
With profit to the world and to myself,—
For instance, the unkind among the Editors,
My debtors, those I mean to say
Who cannot or who will not pay
And all my creditors.
These, for my own sake, I’d destroy;
But for the world’s, and every one’s,
I’d hoe up Mrs. G—’s two sons,
And Mrs. B—’s big little boy,
Call’d only by herself an “only joy.”
As Mr. Irving’s chapel’s not too full,
Himself alone I’d pull—
But for the peace of years that have to run,
I’d make the Lord Mayor’s a perpetual station,
And put a period to rotation,
By rooting up all Aldermen but one,—
These are but hints what good might thus be done!
But ah! I fear the public good
Is little by the public understood,—
For instance—if with flint, and steel, and tinder,
Great Swing, for once a philanthropic man
Proposed to throw a light upon thy plan,
No doubt some busy fool would hinder
His burning all the Foundling to a cinder.
Or, if the Lord Mayor, on an Easter Monday,
That wine and bun-day,
Proposed to poison all the little Blue-coats
Before they died by bit or sup,
Some meddling Marplot would blow up,
Just at the moment critical,
The economy political
Of Saving their fresh yellow plush and new coats.
Equally ’twould be undone,
Suppose the Bishop of London,
On that great day
In June or May,
When all the large small family of charity,
Brown, black, or carroty,
Walk in their dusty parish shoes
In too, too many two-and-twos,
To sing together till they scare the walls
Of old St. Paul’s,
Sitting in red, grey, green, blue, drab, and white,
Some say a gratifying sight,
Tho’ I think sad—but that’s a schism—
To witness so much pauperism—
Suppose, I say, the Bishop then, to make
In this poor overcrowded world more room,
Proposed to shake
Down that immense extinguisher, the dome—
Some humane Martin in the charity Gal-way
I fear would come and interfere,
Save beadle, brat, and overseer,
To walk back in their parish shoes,
In too, too many two-and-twos,
Islington—Wapping—or Pall Mall way!