Produced by Jerry Kuntz A Political Romance by Laurence Sterne Addressed To _____ ________, Esq; of York. To which is subjoined a KEY. _Ridiculum acri Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat Res_ YORK: Printed in the Year MDCCLIX. [Price ONE SHILLING.] A POLITICAL ROMANCE, &C. SIR, In my last, for want of something better to write about, I told you what a World of Fending and Proving we have had of late, in this little Village of ours, about an _old-cast-Pair-of-black-Plush-Breeches_, which _John_, our Parish-Clerk, about ten Years ago, it seems, had made a Promise of to one _Trim_, who is our Sexton and Dog-Whipper.—To this you write me Word, that you have had more than either one or two Occasions to know a good deal of the shifty Behaviour of this said Master _Trim_,—and that you are astonished, nor can you for your Soul conceive, how so worthless a Fellow, and so worthless a Thing into the Bargain, could become the Occasion of such a Racket as I have represented. Now, though you do not say expressly, you could wish to hear any more about it, yet I see plain enough that I have raised your Curiosity; and therefore, from the same Motive, that I slightly mentioned it at all in my last Letter, I will, in this, give you a full and very circumstantial Account of the whole Affair. But, before I begin, I must first set you right in one very material Point, in which I have misled you, as to the true Cause of all this Uproar amongst us;—which does not take its Rise, as I then told you, from the Affair of the _Breeches;_—but, on the contrary, the whole Affair of the _Breeches_ has taken its Rise from it:—To understand which, you must know, that the first Beginning of the Squabble was not between _John_ the Parish-Clerk and _Trim_ the Sexton, but betwixt the Parson of the Parish and the said Master Trim, about an old _Watch-Coat_, which had many Years hung up in the Church, which _Trim_ had set his Heart upon; and nothing would serve _Trim_ but he must take it home, in order to have it converted into a _warm Under-Petticoat_ for his Wife, and a _Jerkin_ for himself, against Winter; which, in a plaintive Tone, he most humbly begg’d his Reverence would consent to.