O give no more to flagrant Wrong
The chances you refuse to Right,
Nor let a boon to Vice belong
Wherein the virtuous would delight;
Man's nature loves the new and strange,
With Sinbad's luck and Crusoe's trip,-
While stagnant misery pines for change,
And longs to get on board o' ship.

Why should we add to reckless Sin
This new temptation to do worse,-
That, once transported, he may win
A blessing - not a guilty curse?
Alas! how little wisdom serves
To govern men, or rule a land,
When
hope
of condemnation nerves
The burglar's or the murderer's hand!

Your convict's unrepented crime,
That well deserved the hangman's rope,
Is punished - in a brilliant clime,
With all things new to new-born hope!
While yonder honest parish slave,
Harass'd by poverty's sharp goads,
Can only hope - a pauper's grave,
And work meanwhile upon the roads!

Go to! send forth with costly care
Such foolish cargoes now no more;
But let true worth your lottery share
Of prizes on some richer shore:
Help not, as now, those Belial bands
Adventurous and free to roam
O'er wide Australia's happy lands,-
But keep them to be slaves at home.

Fetter'd, and drill'd, and prison-drest,
Well-sentinell'd, and whipp'd to task,-
A living warning to the rest,-
This is the penalty we ask;

Home-shame
for such; to moil in much,
And change their place with honest men,
Whose only sin is,- little luck,
And living threescore years and ten!