The New Hampshire Gazette

For the N. H. GAZETTE.
IMPROVISO
On reading "John Bull in America."
It is well known, that in the reign of King James, the first, of literary memory, a dreadful and deep laid plot was formed, to blow up the said King and the Parliament, but the sagacity of that monarch smelt out and puffed it away.
But it seems as though there was never to be an end to Popish Plots! As the world grows older, it grows more knowing, and more daringly set on mischief. That plot was hatched and matured by one Guy Faux and accomplices.
The object was only to blow up a King, a hundred or two Lords, and perhaps four or five hundred Commoners. But a plot of modern date has been formed to blow up a vast country by one stroke; displaying the immense superiority of modern genius and enterprise.
A man by the same name of Faux, a descendant perhaps of old Mr. Guy Faux, at the tenth or twelfth generation, has signalized himself and his coadjutors, the editors of the Quarterly Review, by a plot to blow up the United States of America in one tremendous explosion! There is something gigantic in this! And if the contriver falls, he falls like Phaeton, from a bold enterprise, magnis ausis.
But there is a difference in the two cases; in the former the explosion was prevented; in the latter it has taken place. But certain Americans have contrived, to the utter discomfiture of said Faux and his said coadjutors, to remove the threatened object out of danger, so that it could not be hurt, and to place him and them over the very place, insomuch, that the explosion has overwhelmed the contriver and his accomplices, and left the object of disgust and menace perfectly unharmed.
On occasion of the deliverance from the catastrophe first mentioned, it is understood, that the following poetical effusion was said or sung in the nation delivered so wonderfully; whether it was composed by the poet Laureat for the memorable fifth of November, or by some other genius of a lower grade, does not appear. The stanza is to this effect:
"May Heaven confound all Popish Plots,
And sink them in the mire,
Who would blow up the Parliament
And King with gunpowder."
To save our Poets the trouble of emulating this strain, I who am somewhat of a versifier myself, modestly propose to accommodate the distich thus to be sung by the Americans:
"Sunk are the plots of Quarterly,
Deep sunk in a quagmire,
Who would blow up America,
By Faux's gunpowder."