How Jack, having got rid of the old landlord, set up another to his mind,
quarrelled with Martin, and turned him out of doors. How he pillaged all
his shops, and abolished his whole dispensatory. How the new landlord
{164a} laid about him, mauled Peter, worried Martin, and made the whole
neighbourhood tremble. How Jack’s friends fell out among themselves,
split into a thousand parties, turned all things topsy-turvy, till
everybody grew weary of them; and at last, the blustering landlord dying,
Jack was kicked out of doors, a new landlord {164b} brought in, and
Martin re-established. How this new landlord let Martin do what he
pleased, and Martin agreed to everything his pious landlord desired,
provided Jack might be kept low. Of several efforts Jack made to raise
up his head, but all in vain; till at last the landlord died, and was
succeeded by one {164c} who was a great friend to Peter, who, to humble
Martin, gave Jack some liberty. How Martin grew enraged at this, called
in a foreigner {164d} and turned out the landlord; in which Jack
concurred with Martin, because this landlord was entirely devoted to
Peter, into whose arms he threw himself, and left his country. How the
new landlord secured Martin in the full possession of his former rights,
but would not allow him to destroy Jack, who had always been his friend.
How Jack got up his head in the North, and put himself in possession of a
whole canton, to the great discontent of Martin, who finding also that
some of Jack’s friends were allowed to live and get their bread in the
south parts of the country, grew highly discontented with the new
landlord he had called in to his assistance. How this landlord kept
Martin in order, upon which he fell into a raging fever, and swore he
would hang himself or join in with Peter, unless Jack’s children were all
turned out to starve. Of several attempts to cure Martin, and make peace
between him and Jack, that they might unite against Peter; but all made
ineffectual by the great address of a number of Peter’s friends, that
herded among Martin’s, and appeared the most zealous for his interest.
How Martin, getting abroad in this mad fit, looked so like Peter in his
air and dress, and talked so like him, that many of the neighbours could
not distinguish the one from the other; especially when Martin went up
and down strutting in Peter’s armour, which he had borrowed to fight Jack
{165a}. What remedies were used to cure Martin’s distemper . . .
Here the author being seized with a fit of dulness, to which he is very
subject, after having read a poetical epistle addressed to . . . it
entirely composed his senses, so that he has not writ a line since.
_N.B._—Some things that follow after this are not in the MS., but seem to
have been written since, to fill up the place of what was not thought
convenient then to print.
A PROJECT FOR THE UNIVERSAL BENEFIT OF MANKIND.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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