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That the Ministry foresaw this great change, is plain from the Callico-Act; whereby it is now become the occupation of women all over England, to convert their useless female habits into beds, window-curtains, chairs, and joint-stools; undressing themselves (as it were) before their transformation.

The philosophy of this transformation will not seem surprizing to people who search into the bottom of things. Madam Bourignon, a devout French lady, has shewn us, how man was at first created male and female in one individual, having the faculty of propagation within himself: A circumstance necessary to the state of innocence, wherein a man’s happiness was not to depend upon the caprice of another. It was not till after he had made a faux pas, that he had his female mate. Many such transformations of individuals have been well attested; particularly one by Montaigne, and another by the late Bishop of Salisbury. From all which it appears, that this system of male and female has already undergone and may hereafter suffer, several alterations. Every smatterer in anatomy knows, that a woman is but an introverted man; a new fusion and flatus will turn the hollow bottom of a bottle into a convexity; but I forbear, (for the sake of my modest men-readers, who are in a few days to be virgins.)

In some subjects, the smallest alterations will do: some men are sufficiently spread about the hips, and contriv’d with female softness, that they want only the negative quantity to make them buxom wenches; and there are women who are, as it were, already the ebauche of a good sturdy man. If nature cou’d be puzzl’d, it will be how to bestow the redundant matter of the exuberant bubbies that now appear about town, or how to roll out the short dapper fellows into well-siz’d women.

This great conjunction will begin to operate on Saturday the 29th instant. Accordingly, about eight at night, as Senezino shall begin at the Opera, si videte, he shall be observ’d to make an unusual motion; upon which the audience will be affected with a red suffusion over their countenance: And because a strong succession of the muscles of the belly is necessary towards performing this great operation, both sexes will be thrown into a profuse involuntary laughter. Then (to use the modest terms of Anaximander) shall negative quantity be turn’d into positive, etc. Time never beheld, nor will it ever assemble, such a number of untouch’d virgins within those walls! but alas! such will be the impatience and curiosity of people to act in their new capacity, that many of them will be compleated men and women that very night. To prevent the disorders that may happen upon this occasion, is the chief design of this paper.

Gentlemen have begun already to make use of this conjunction to compass their filthy purposes. They tell the ladies forsooth, that it is only parting with a perishable commodity, hardly of so much value as a callico under-petticoat; since, like its mistress, it will be useless in the form it is now in. If the ladies have no regard to the dishonour and immorality of the action, I desire they will consider, that nature who never destroys her own productions, will exempt big-belly’d women till the time of their lying-in; so that not to be transformed, will be the same as to be pregnant. If they don’t think it worth while to defend a fortress that is to be demolish’d in a few days, let them reflect that it will be a melancholy thing nine months hence, to be brought to bed of a bastard; a posthumous bastard as it were, to which the quondam father can be no more than a dry nurse.

This wonderful transformation is the instrument of nature, to balance matters between the sexes. The cruelty of scornful mistresses shall be return’d; the slighted maid shall grow into an imperious gallant, and reward her undoer with a big belly, and a bastard.