himself are
contemptuously set aside and the forbidden favor taken.

"I trust that this knowledge will save the Home Secretary any repetition
of the anxiety he has suffered on this occasion, but while regretting my
want of success in petitions for myself I desire to thank the right
honorable gentleman for the kind attention he pays to my petitions for
others.

"The Home Secretary will perhaps remember his merciful consideration of
the case of Mr. Frederick Barton, whom he released some short time ago,
but it will perhaps be news to him to hear that it was I who invented
Mr. Barton's fortune and wrote the petition which furnished the grounds
for advising Her Most Gracious Majesty to extend her royal clemency to
the deserving young man. The result of my petition by no means surprised
me, for I was always confident that an English gentleman could never be
guilty of the solecism against English customs implied by keeping in
prison a young gentleman who could perform so meritorious an act as to
fall heir to many bags of gold and sixteen thousand acres of cotton land
in India.

"Mr. Barton had previously petitioned for mercy pointing out that he was
but 17 years old at the time of his arrest, and asking that his extreme
youth might plead for him. This petition the Home Secretary treated with
very proper contempt, but it was really delightful to contrast that
contempt with the respectful and instant attention shown to the
petition of the young heir.

"I have a difficulty in expressing the comfort with which I saw an
English Home Secretary, with all the power of the Empire in his hands to
protect him against imposition, releasing a criminal after reading a
sheet of foolscap covered with lies, which had been left at the Home
Office by a released convict within half an hour after passing through
the gates of Millbank. It is but the merest justice, however, to add
that poor Mr. Smith, the presenter of the petition, was as badly
humbugged as the Home Secretary himself. The glitter of gold was flashed
before his eyes as it was before the eyes of Sir William Vernon
Harcourt, and with equal effect.

"To me this effect was certain, as not the slightest doubt existed in my
mind that the moment it became a question of great sums of money all
distinctions would vanish and pickpocket and Home Secretary would
scramble on to the same foothold.

"The result, it is unnecessary to add, perfectly justified me. As I
watched the lucky Fred