ea,
I'll point you out a pattern which a better plan will teach
Than that of sending Missioners to Tombuctoo to preach.

Converting of the Heathen's a very proper view,
By preaching true religion to Pagan and to Jew,
And bringing over Cannibals to Christian meat and bread,
Unless they catch your Parson first and eat him up instead.

But what's more edifying to see, a pretty deal,
Is hearty British labourers partaking of a meal,
With wives, and lots of children, about their knees that climb,
And having tucked their platefuls in, get helped another time.

Beyond the roaring ocean; beneath the soil we tread,
You've English men and women, well housed and clothed and fed,
Who but for help and guidance to leave our crowded shores,
Would now be stealing, begging, or lie starving at our doors.

Who taught them self-reliance, and stirred them to combine,
And club their means together to get across the brine,
Instead of strikes, and mischief, and breaking of the law,
And wasting time in hearing incendiaries jaw?

Who led their expeditions? and under whose command
Through dangers and through hardships sought they the promised land?
A second MOSES, surely, it was who did it all,
It was a second MOSES in bonnet and in shawl.

By means of one good lady were all these wonders wrought,
By CAROLINE CHISHOLM'S energy, benevolence, and thought,
Instead of making here and there a convert of a Turk,
She has made idle multitudes turn fruitfully to work.

The ragged pauper crawling towards a parish grave
She roused--directed to a home beyond the western wave;
She smoothed his weary passage across the troubled deep,
With food, and air, and decencies of ship-room and of sleep.

There's many a wife and mother will bless that lady's name,
Embracing a fat infant--who might else have drowned the same,
A mother, yet no wife, compelled by poverty to sin,
And die in gaol or hospital of misery and gin.

The REVEREND EBENEZER, I'd not deny his dues,
For saving Patagonians, and Bosjesmen, and Zooloos;
But MRS. CHISHOLM'S mission is what I far prefer;
For saving British natives I'd give the palm to her.

And now that a subscription is opened and begun,
In order to acknowledge the good that she has done
Among that sort of natives--the most important tribe--
Come down like handsome people, and handsomely subscribe.

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