THE Mens Answer TO THE Womens Petition AGAINST COFFEE, VINDICATING Their own Performances, and the Vertues of that Liquor, from the Undeserved Aspersions lately cast upon them by their SCANDALOUS PAMPHLET.
THE MENS ANSWER TO THE WOMENS PETITION, ETC
Could it be imagined, that ungrateful women, after so much laborious drudgery, both by day and night, and the best of our blood and spirits spent in your service, you should thus publicly complain? Certain we are, that there never was age, or nation, more indulgent to your sex; have we not condescended to all the methods of debauchery? Invented more postures than [the poet] Aretine ever dreamed of! Been pimps to our own wives, and courted gallants even with the hazard of our estates, to do us the civility of making us not only contented, but most obliged cuckolds: is he thought worthy to be esteemed a gentleman, that has not seven times passed the torrid zone of a venereal distemper, or does not maintain, at least, a brace of mistresses; talk not to us of those doting fumblers of seven or eight hundred years old, a lark is better than a kite; and cock-sparrows, though not as long lived, are undoubtedly preferable for the work of generation before dull ravens, though some think they live three hundred years: that our island is a paradise for women, is verified still by the brisk activity of our men, who with an equal contempt scorn Italian padlocks, and defy French dildo's, knowing that a small dose of natures quintessence, satisfies better in a female limbic, than the largest potion infused by art.
Let silly chits complain never so much that madam money is dead and buried, we dare appeal to all the commissioners of whetstones park, the suburb runners, and moorfields night-walkers, if ever they had better trading; nay, have we not forced languishing nature by preparations of [aphrodisiacs], spiced meats, anchovies, [French broths], jelly-broths, lambstones, [spirits], bonnie sausages, etc. All to answer the height of your amorous passions, and prevent the pitiful lechery of an artificial tranquility. Have we not with excess of patience borne your affronts, been sweated, purged, fluxed between two feather-beds, flogged, jibed, and endured all the rest of the Devil's martyrdoms, and will you still offer to repine? Certainly experienced Solomon was in the right, when he told us that the grave and the womb were equally insatiable.
But why must innocent coffee be the object of your spleen? That harmless and healing liquor, which indulgent providence first sent amongst us, at a time when brimmers of rebellion, and fanatic zeal had intoxicated the nation, and we wanted a drink at once to make us sober and merry: it is not this incomparable settle brain that shortens natures standard, or makes us less active in the sports of Venus, and we wonder you should take these exceptions, since so many of the little houses, with the Turkish woman straddling on their signs, are but emblems of what is to be done within for your conveniences, mere nurseries to promote the petulant trade, and breed up a stock of hopeful plants for the future service of the republic, in the most thriving mysteries of debauchery; there being scarce a coffee-hut but affords a tawdry woman, a wonton daughter, or a buxom maid, to accommodate customers; and can you think that any which frequent such discipline, can be wanting in their pastures, or defective in their arms? The news we chat of there, you will not think it impertinent, when you consider the fair opportunities you have thereby, of entertaining an obliging friend in our absence, and how many of us you have dubbed knights of the bull-feather, whilst we have sate innocently sipping the Devil's holy-water; we do not call it so for driving the cacodemon of lechery out of us, for the truth is, it rather assists us for your nocturnal benevolences, by drying up those crude flatulent humors, which otherwise would make us only flash in the pan, without doing that thundering execution which your expectations exact, we dare appeal to experience in the case.
Coffee is the general drink throughout Turkey, and those eastern regions, and yet no part of the world can boast more able or eager performers, than those circumcised gentlemen, who, (like our modern gallants) own no other joys of heaven, than what consists in venereal titillations; the physical qualities of this liquor are almost innumerable and its virtues (if you will believe pointing, able to out-noise the quack-noise of an all-healing doctor, when your kindness at the close hug has bestowed on us a virulent gonorrhea, this is our [panacea], in nature and [cordial] is an ass to it, it is base adulterate wine and surcharges of muddy ale that enfeeble nature, makes a man as salacious as a goat, and yet as impotent as age, whereas coffee collects and settles the spirits, makes the erection more vigorous, the ejaculation more full, adds a spiritual escency to the sperm, and renders it more firm and suitable to the gusto of the womb, and proportionate to the ardors and expectation too, of the female paramour.
As for our taking tobacco you have no reason to object, since most of your own sex are so well skilled in managing a pipe; and if you find that of your husbands to be naught, it is his natural infirmity, or your own perpetual pumping him (not drinking coffee) is the occasion of the defect, and therefore let such tom farthings be forbidden the concoction of the rare Arabian berry, and condemned everlastingly with the rest of do-little congregation, to the carrying of glister-pipes for the use of the well effected sisterhood.
You may well permit us to talk abroad, for at home we have scarce time to utter a word for the insufferable din of your ever active tongues, the foolish extravagances of our lives, are infinitely out-done by the wild frolics of yours; until noon you lie a bed hatching concupiscence, then having paid your adoration, to the ugly idol in the glass, you descend to dinner were you gourmandize enough at one meal to famish a town besieged; after that, you are called out by a cozen, and hurried out in his honors coach (whose jogging, serves as a preparation to your lechery) away to the play-house, where a lascivious dance, a bawdy song, and the petulant gallants tickling of your hand, having made an insurrection in your blood, you go to allay it with an evenings exercise at the tavern, there you spend freely, yet being robed of nothing we can miss, home you come in a railing humor, and at last give us nothing for supper but a buttered bun.
Cease then for the future your clamors against our civil follies. Alas! Alas! Dear hearts, the coffee house is the citizens academy, where he learns more wit than ever his grandfather taught him, the young-gallants stage where he displays the wardrobe of his excellent noble parts; it is the non-cons bull-baiting, the news-mongers exchange, the fools business, the knaves ambuscade, and the wise mans recreation: here it is where we have the sparkling cider, the mighty mum, and the back recruiting chocolate; it is coffee that both keeps us sober, or can make us so; and let our wives that hereafter shall presume to petition against it, be confined to lie alone all night, and in the day time drink nothing but bonny clabber.
Finis.
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Wow. The men's answer to the women's petition can be summed up as, "We need coffee to put up with y'all." We are living in a wonderful world where documents such as this one are freely available to the world. I transcribed this and the Women's Petition into modern English and spelling, to make it easier to read. A fun little project.
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