fitness to
be intrusted with their interests. The friends of the candidate took
the alarm, and indignantly denied the charges of the Perpendiculars,
affirming that their monikin had been well paid for what he had done.
In an evil hour, the candidate undertook to explain, by means of a
handbill, in which he stated that he had been influenced by no other
motive than a desire to do that which he believed to be right. Such a
person was deemed to be wanting in natural abilities, and, as a matter
of course, he was defeated; for your Leaplow elector was not such an ass
as to confide the care of his interests to one who knew so little how to
take care of his own.

About this time, too, a celebrated dramatist produced a piece in which
the hero performed prodigies under the excitement of patriotism, and the
labor of his pen was incontinently damned for his pains; both pit and
boxes--the galleries dissenting--deciding that it was out of all nature
to represent a monikin incurring danger in this unheard-of manner,
without a motive. The unhappy wight altered the last scene, by causing
his hero to be rewarded by a good, round sum of money, when the piece
had a very respectable run for the rest of the season, though I question
if it ever were as popular as it would have been, had this precaution
been taken before it was first acted.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE IMPORTANCE OF MOTIVES TO A LEGISLATOR--MORAL
CONSECUTIVENESS, COMETS, KITES, AND A CONVOY; WITH SOME EVERY-DAY
LEGISLATION; TOGETHER WITH CAUSE AND EFFECT.

Legislation, during the occultation of the great moral postulate
Principle by the passage of Pecuniary Interest, is, at the best, but a
melancholy affair. It proved to be peculiarly so with us just at that
moment, for the radiance of the divine property had been a good deal
obscured in the houses, for a long time previously, by the interference
of various minor satellites. In nothing, therefore, did the deplorable
state of things which existed make itself more apparent, than in our
proceedings.

As Captain Poke and myself, notwithstanding our having taken different
stands in politics, still continued to live together, I had better
opportunities to note the workings of the obscuration on the ingenuous
mind of my colleague than on that of most other persons. He early began
to keep a diary of his expenses, regularly deducting the amount at night
from the sum of eight dollars, and regarding the balance as so much
clear gai