self, when he took his affairs
into his own hands, the richest man in the county. It has been long the
custom of this family to celebrate the heir's completion of his
twenty-first year, by an entertainment, at which the house is thrown
open to all that are inclined to enter it, and the whole province flocks
together as to a general festivity. On this occasion young Bluster
exhibited the first tokens of his future eminence, by shaking his purse
at an old gentleman who had been the intimate friend of his father, and
offering to wager a greater sum than he could afford to venture; a
practice with which he has, at one time or other, insulted every
freeholder within ten miles round him.

His next acts of offence were committed in a contentious and spiteful
vindication of the privileges of his manours, and a rigorous and
relentless prosecution of every man that presumed to violate his game.
As he happens to have no estate adjoining equal to his own, his
oppressions are often borne without resistance, for fear of a long suit,
of which he delights to count the expenses without the least solicitude
about the event; for he knows, that where nothing but an honorary right
is contested, the poorer antagonist must always suffer, whatever shall
be the last decision of the law.

By the success of some of these disputes, he has so elated his
insolence, and, by reflection upon the general hatred which they have
brought upon him, so irritated his virulence, that his whole life is
spent in meditating or executing mischief. It is his common practice to
procure his hedges to be broken in the night, and then to demand
satisfaction for damages which his grounds have suffered from his
neighbour's cattle. An old widow was yesterday soliciting Eugenio to
enable her to replevin her only cow, then in the pound by squire
Bluster's order, who had sent one of his agents to take advantage of her
calamity, and persuade her to sell the cow at an under rate. He has
driven a day-labourer from his cottage, for gathering blackberries in a
hedge for his children, and has now an old woman in the county-gaol for
a trespass which she committed, by coming into his ground to pick up
acorns for her hog.

Money, in whatever hands, will confer power. Distress will fly to
immediate refuge, without much consideration of remote consequences.
Bluster has therefore a despotick authority in many families, whom he
has assisted, on pressing occasions, with larger sums tha