1803.5
[What's to be done to save the State?]
“Y. N. S.”
The Gentleman's Magazine, LXIII (August 1803), p. 764

Several long hand-bills, rousing the public spirit, have been dispersed; a few words, well adapted, would better strike the public mind. Under that idea we give the following lines, and wish they may be inserted in all the newspapers and magazines in the kingdom

What's to be done to save the State?
Arm! fight! unite! or dread your fate.
The French have thirty million men,
And us they fritter down to ten;[1]
And with their threetoone they boast
They'll beat us on the English coast,
And rob us of our lands and lives,
Deflower our virgins and our wives:
Britons, arise, and save the State;
Arm! fight! unite! or dread your fate.

Notes

1. [Author's note]: "See Morning Post of May 26, where it is said, that the Legislative Body and the Tribunate of France were, on the 20th of May, addressed by the Orators of the Government; contemptuously asserting, that England hazarded her fortune, on a population of ten millions, committed with a population of thirty millions."