Edmund Burke‘s Statue, Bristol, December 2018
Edmund Burke on the lower orders – ‘ a swinish multitude’ –
‘Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude … ‘
Reflections on the Revolution in France 1790
Edmund Burke ‘s Statue
Paid for by a Bristol tobacco baron,
We look on your works and despair:
You stand there, commanding Bristol’s heights,
Your ancien regime condescension
Masked by this deceptive commemoration:
“I wish to be a member of parliament to have my share
of doing good and resisting evil.”
Far more truthful if the plinth were etched
With this memorialization:
‘I regard all you common people,
Passing me by on your trivial tasks
As nothing more than a swinish multitude.’
Thomas Spence:
Pigs’ meat; or, lessons for the swinish multitude: Published in weekly penny numbers, collected by the poor man’s advocate (an old veteran in the cause of freedom) in the course of his reading for more than twenty years. Intended to promote among the labouring part of mankind proper ideas of their situation, of their importance, and of their rights. And to convince them that their forlorn condition has not been entirely overlooked and forgotten, nor their just cause unpleaded, neither by their maker not by the best and most enlightened of men in all ages.
London: printed for T. Spence, at the hive of liberty, No. 8, Little-Turnstile, High Holborn
Edmund Burke Statue Haiku
Swinish multitude?
Remember Mr. Shelley –
Ozymandias!
All Hail Thomas Spence!
We’re no ‘swinish multitude’!
Pig’s Meat! People’s Farms!
Tokens issued by Thomas Spence and on display include
‘PIG’S MEAT PUBLISHED BY T * SPENCE LONDON (depicting a boar trampling upon the symbols of monarchy, parliament and the established church), and
PIG’S MEAT PUBLISHED BY T * SPENCE LONDON (a boar, once more, trampling upon symbols of authority: coronet, crozier and staff).
So you stand there on this Christmas Sunday,
Regarding the yuletide shoppers and beggars,
Most, oblivious to the hypocrisy
Of your words (and your pocket borough past) –
But just once in a while someone walks by,
Muttering ‘Swinish multitude, indeed.’
For they know of the anger caused by Burke,
They know of the radical consequence:
An Address to the Hon. Edmund Burke from the Swinish Multitude
Pearls Cast before Swine by Edmund Burke Scraped together by Old Hubert
Hog’s Wash, later renamed Politics for the People or a Salmagundy for Swine
One Penny’s Worth of Pig’s Meat,; Pigs’ Meat; or, Lessons for the Swinish Multitude
A Rod for the Burkites by One of the Swinish Multitude
Peas for the Swine and Grapes for Citizen
Husks for the Swine, Dedicated to the Swine of England, the Rabble of Scotland, and the Wretches of Ireland by one of the Herd
The Grunter’s Ode, or, an Heroic Poem, by a Swine … dedicated to Mr Burke, Godfather of the Swinish Multitude
The Rights of Swine
A New Catechism for the Use of the Swinish Multitude to be had in all Sties
Sources used:
Shelley and Burke’s Swinish Multitude Roland Bartel Keats-Shelley Journal Vol 18 (1969)
The Poor Man’s Revolutionary ed by Alastair Bonnett and Keith Armstrong