ent was connected. He
was likewise aware that he was not altogether deficient in courage and in
propriety of behaviour. He knew that his appearance was not particularly
against him; his face not being like that of a convicted pickpocket, nor
his gait resembling that of a fox who has lost his tail; yet he never
believed himself adapted for the appointment, being aware that he had no
aptitude for the doing of dirty work, if called to do it, nor pliancy
which would enable him to submit to scurvy treatment, whether he did
dirty work or not--requisites, at the time of which he is speaking,
indispensable in every British official; requisites, by-the-by, which his
friend, the Radical, possessed in a high degree; but though he bore no
ill-will towards his friend, his friend bore anything but good-will
towards him; for from the moment that he had obtained the appointment for
himself, his mind was filled with the most bitter malignity against the
writer, and naturally enough; for no one ever yet behaved in a base
manner towards another, without forthwith conceiving a mortal hatred
against him. You wrong another, know yourself to have acted basely, and
are enraged, not against yourself--for no one hates himself--but against
the innocent cause of your baseness; reasoning very plausibly, 'But for
that fellow, I should never have been base; for had he not existed I
could not have been so, at any rate against him;' and this hatred is all
the more bitter, when you reflect that you have been needlessly base.

Whilst the Tories are in power the writer's friend, of his own accord,
raves against the Tories because they do not give the writer a certain
appointment, and makes, or says he makes, desperate exertions to make
them do so; but no sooner are the Tories out, with whom he has no
influence, and the Whigs in, with whom he, or rather his party, has
influence, than he gets the place for himself, though, according to his
own expressed opinion--an opinion with which the writer does not, and
never did, concur--the writer was the only person competent to hold it.
Now had he, without saying a word to the writer, or about the writer with
respect to the employment, got the place for himself when he had an
opportunity, knowing, as he very well knew, himself to be utterly
unqualified for it, the transaction, though a piece of jobbery, would not
have merited the title of a base transaction; as the matter stands,
however, who can avoid calling th