t among the different powers of Europe; for on all these subjects
the deliberations of a House of Commons occasionally turn.

"But these great purposes will never be answered by electing an
illiterate savage, scarce qualified, in point of understanding, to act as
a country justice of peace, a man who has scarce ever travelled beyond
the excursion of a fox-chase, whose conversation never rambles farther
than his stable, his kennel, and the barnyard; who rejects decorum as
degeneracy, mistakes rusticity for independence, ascertains his courage
by leaping over gates and ditches, and founds his triumph on feats of
drinking; who holds his estate by a factious tenure, professes himself
the blind slave of a party, without knowing the principles that gave it
birth, or the motives by which it is actuated, and thinks that all
patriotism consists in railing indiscriminately at ministers, and
obstinately opposing every measure of the administration. Such a man,
with no evil intentions of his own, might be used as a dangerous tool in
the hands of a desperate faction, by scattering the seeds of
disaffection, embarrassing the wheels of government, and reducing the
whole kingdom to anarchy."

Here the knight was interrupted by the shouts and acclamations of the
Vanderpelfites, who cried aloud, "Hear him! hear him! long life to the
iron-cased orator." This clamour subsiding, he prosecuted his harangue
to the following effect:--

"Such a man as I have described may be dangerous from ignorance, but is
neither so mischievous, nor so detestable as the wretch who knowingly
betrays his trust, and sues to be the hireling and prostitute of a weak
and worthless minister; a sordid knave, without honour or principle, who
belongs to no family whose example can reproach him with degeneracy, who
has no country to command his respect, no friend to engage his affection,
no religion to regulate his morals, no conscience to restrain his
iniquity, and who worships no God but Mammon; an insinuating miscreant,
who undertakes for the dirtiest work of the vilest administration; who
practises national usury, receiving by wholesale the rewards of venality,
and distributing the wages of corruption by retail."

In this place our adventurer's speech was drowned in the acclamations of
the fox-hunters, who now triumphed in their turn, and hoicksed the
speaker, exclaiming, "Well opened, Jowler--to' un, to' un again,
Sweetlips! hey, Merry, Whitefoot!" After a sh