diligence; he gets not half enough for
collecting to pay for his horse-flesh. He lounges about a year or two,
squanders away the money, and where is his bondsman? The town! Right,
the town is his bondsman. The law says, Treasurer, do you issue your
execution against the sheriff, and command him to levy upon the
constable, who is not worth a farthing; get a return of _non est
inventus_; then levy upon his bondsman, the town; take the estate of
everybody, post it for sale, get it receipted and not delivered; sue the
receipts-man, get the money, make the town pay it twice,--27,000l. in
arrears! It is a shame! Oh, such a bustle with Mr. Everybody, and all to
pick up a needle! The State is like the nabob's family. 'Phil, tell Peg
to tell Sue to pick up the needle.'

"Now in fact it is a very easy thing to pick up a needle, but if one
cannot stoop to pick it up another ought to be paid for it. One servant
who is paid for his work will pick up more needles than twenty fat,
lounging slaves that think it a drudgery and get nothing for it.

"It would be a good thing for a State to know that _everybody's business
is nobody's_. Every man in Connecticut is responsible for a faithful
collection of public money; then it is nobody's business. The Prompter
never saw a watch with two mainsprings, much less with two hundred. One
spring is enough, and that government, the executive of which depends
on many springs, will jar, clash, stop, and be always out of
order,--27,000l. in arrears.

"Appoint one collector, the treasurer; make him answerable for the
collection of the whole state revenue. Let him appoint his deputies; let
them be few, but let them be paid. All the difficulty will vanish; one
spring will move the whole; the state treasury, like the federal, will
be supplied; no arrears then, no levying executions on towns."

* * * * *

This happens to have its application to public affairs; most of the
twenty-eight papers have their special point in personal character. The
writing is not elegant; it is sometimes ungrammatical; but it is
intelligible, and with its bluntness could hardly fail to make itself
felt. It is when one compares it with similar work of Franklin's, as
"The Whistle," for example, that one is reminded of its inartistic form.
But Webster was always busy over subjects directly connected with the
well-being of the people. His philological work had its origin in this
motive, and in his