Memorable Audiene of the 19th of February, 1789.
Illustrated by
The NEW DOCTRINE of FUNDAMENTALS,
or a
Metaphysico-Medico-Political Comment
On a Passage in St. Paul,
“The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies.”
St. Paul Epist. to Corinth. x. 22.
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My friend Dr. Purcell, understands by the term slow bellies, that the Cretans seldom went to stool, and, that thefaeces reacting on their blood, put them into a bad humour, and made them EVIL BEASTS, ill-tempered brutes. It is very true, that a man who seldom goes to stool, will be more choleric than another. His bile does not flow ; it is boiled over again, and his blood grues adust.
The morning that you have a favour to ask of a VICEROY, or his SEC. inform yourself particularly on the state of their bowels. If they have a free passage, it is the mollia tempus fandi.
Every one knows that a man’s character and disposition depends entirely on his intercourse with the necessary-house. The late Lord Sackville would not have urged on the American war at such a sanguinary rate, had he not been troubled with haemoirhoides in his intestinum rectum, which indurated the faeces. The Princess Dowager of Wales used to call him Rotten A—e. This nickname redoubled the acrimony of his bile, and probably cost Mr. Laurens his liberty, and Dr. Dodd his life.
That immaculate paragon of political and moral excellence, the present Premier of Great Britain, is habitually costive, notwithstanding the Bishop of Lincoln’s (Dr. Prettyman) prescription of an Ounce of Rhubarb every morn. It is very probable, that the Rt. Rev. Doctor, when SEC. to Mr. Pitt, sometimes experienced the effects of this fundamental bondage in the latter, as I have been told by Captain J—n who used to amuse the D. of Rutland with the story, that Dr. P’s first question to Mr. Pitt’s valet was, “Well! what news from the water closet?”
Many yet remember that famous Phillippic pronounced by the present Marquis of Lansdown, shortly after a difference with his quondam coadjutor and pupil, in which, amongst other strokes, we find the marquis recommending to Mr. P’s serious attention the caution of Mentor to Telemachus on, “the predominance of humour” and proposing that it be transcribed and placed at the bed’s head of every Minister in Christendom. Thus making it of equal import with the recollective rule of Philip of Macedon, in whose chamber a Lord was in waiting for the whole purpose of reminding his Kingship when he waked in the morning “That he was a man”—But to resume, if we could recur to Mr. Pitt’s diary at the time above alluded to, we she [sic] should doubtless find a ready solution to the Marquis’s counsel.
It is said our present magnanimous and generous Chief Governor ; (whom God long preserve!) is sometimes so plugged up,— that he is obliged to have recourse to Bartlet’s horse purging balls! This much transpired from his groom of the water closet, who lately bought a large quantity of Mr. Magee, who is in expectation of an exclusive patent for the sale of this valuable Apertive. It were to be wished that the day the two Houses went up with the Address, that his Excellency and his posterior’s had made a few detachments to the Water closet ;—perhaps the Lords and Gentlemen would have then hit on the mollia tempore fandi!
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