familiar than
it would otherwise be. The second is increased; but the first is almost
created."

Mr. James Smith, by bringing ignorance, folly, dishonesty into contact with
my name, in the way of conditional insinuation, has done me a good turn: he
has given me right to a freedom of personal remark which I might have
declined to take in the case of a person who is useful and respected in
matters which he understands.

Tit for tat is logic all the world over. By the way, what has become of the
rest of the maxim: we never hear it {122} now. When I was a boy, in some
parts of the country at least, it ran thus:

"Tit for tat;
Butter for fat:
If you kill my dog,
I'll kill your cat."

He is a glaring instance of the truth of the observations quoted above. I
will answer for it that, at the Mersey Dock Board, he never dreams of
proving that the balance at the banker's is larger than that in the book by
assuming that the larger sum is there, and then proving that the other
supposition--the smaller balance--is upon that assumption, an absurdity. He
never says to another director, How can you dare to refuse me a right to
assume the larger balance, when you yourself, the other day,
said,--Suppose, for argument's sake, we had 80,000l. at the banker's,
though you knew the book only showed 30,000l.? This is the way in which he
has supported his geometrical paradox by Euclid's example: and this is not
the way he reasons at the board; I know it by the character of him as a man
of business which has reached my ears from several quarters. But in
geometry and rational arithmetic he is a smatterer, though expert at
computation; at the board he is a trained man of business. The language of
geometry is so new to him that he does not know what is meant by "two mean
proportionals:" but all the phrases of commerce are rooted in his mind. He
is most unerasably booked in the history of the squaring of the circle, as
the speculator who took a right to assume a proposition for the destruction
of other propositions, on the express ground that Euclid assumes a
proposition to show that it destroys itself: which is as if the curate
should demand permission to throttle the squire because St. Patrick drove
the vermin to suicide to save themselves from slaughter. He is conspicuous
as a speculator who, more visibly than almost any other known to history,
reasoned in a circle by way of reasoning on a circle. But {123} what I have
chiefly to do w