in which four or five combatants took
part, the looseness of whose notions induced him to express his own more
coherent ones in the _Contemporary Review_.[114]

I am sorry to find that Mr. Greg looked upon my own poor part in that
correspondence as controversial. I merely asked him a question which he
declared to be insidious and irrelevant (not considering that if it were
the one, it could not be the other), and I stated a few facts respecting
which no controversy was possible, and which Mr. Greg, in his own terms,
"sedulously abstained" from noticing.

But Mr. Greg felt my question to be insidious because it made him partly
conscious that he had only examined one half of the subject he was
discussing, and even that half without precision.

Mr. Goldwin Smith had spoken of a rich man as consuming the means of
living of the poor. Mr. Greg, in reply, pointed out how beneficially the
rich man spent what he had got. Upon which I ventured to inquire "how he
got it"; which is indeed precisely the first of all questions to be
asked when the economical relations of any man with his neighbor are to
be examined.

Dick Turpin is blamed--suppose--by some plain-minded person for
consuming the means of other people's living. "Nay," says Dick to the
plain-minded person, "observe how beneficently and pleasantly I spend
whatever I get!"

"Yes, Dick," persists the plain-minded person; "but how do you get it?"

"The question," says Dick, "is insidious and irrelevant."

Do not let it be supposed that I mean to assert any irregularity or
impropriety in Dick's profession--I merely assert the necessity for Mr.
Greg's examination, if he would be master of his subject, of the manner
of Gain in every case, as well as the manner of Expenditure. Such
accounts must always be accurately rendered in a well-regulated society.

136. "Le lieutenant adressa la parole au capitaine, et lui dit
qu'il venait d'enlever ces mannequins, remplis de sucre, de
cannelle, d'amandes, et de raisins sees, a un epicier de Benavente.
Apres qu'il eut rendu compte de son expedition au bureau, les
depouilles de l'epicier furent portees dans l'office. Alors il ne
fut plus question que de se rejouir; je debutai par le buffet, que
je parai de plusieurs bouteilles de ce bon vin que le Seigneur
Rolando m'avoit vante."

Mr. Greg strictly confines himself to an examination of the benefits
conferred on the public by this so agreeabl