CYCLOPS
"-A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the breech.
And says John Wyse:
—'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder." (U12.1338)
[*Ed. John Beresford (1738 - 1805) is an Irish architect and influencial politician. He graduated from Trinity College in 1757, entered parliament in 1760, became a Commissioner of Revenue in 1770, and First Commissioner in 1780. He was the principal Irish advisor to Prime Minister William Pitt, and wielded considerable influence in Ireland. As a Wide Streets Commissioner, Beresford was responsible for bringing the architect James Gandon to Dublin to design the Custom House (where he took an apartment) and the Four Courts. After the 1798 rebellion, Beresford turned the stables of his home, Tyrone House, into a torturing barracks. It is for this unfortunate lapse into barbarity, rather than his political and architectural accomplishments, that he is mainly remembered.]
