Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
What quantity of this shower fell to Peter
Pure's share, was never discovered; but it is easy to conjecture that so
nice, so grateful a conscience was not overcome for nothing. Peter never
liked cheap sins. The contest came, the election takes place, and Peter
Pure's plumper weighs down the adversary's scale. Soon after this he had
the impudence to accost his benefactor thus:--"My dear friend and
benefactor, and worthy sir, I wished for this opportunity of explaining
to you, with the utmost sincerity and confidence, what may have appeared
to you like--yes--really like a breaking of my word. It is true I did
promise you my vote: but then, you know, voting being a very serious
matter, I thought it necessary to read my oath which I should be called
upon to take; and I found, my good friend, to my astonishment, that I was
bound by it not to vote from '_favour and affection_.' Yes, those are the
words. Now, it unfortunately--only unfortunately in this instance, mind
me--happens, that there is not a man in the world so much in my
affection and my favour as yourself; to vote, therefore, as you had
wished me to vote, would, after reading the oath, have been downright
perjury; for I certainly should have voted 'through favour and
affection.' That would have been a fearful weight upon my conscience."
Here was a pretty scoundrel, Eusebius. I should be sorry to have you
encounter him in a crowd, and trust his sides to your elbows, lest you
should be taken with one of those sudden fits of juvenility that are not
quite in accordance with the sedateness of your years. You will not be
inclined to agree with an apologist I met the other day, who simply said
that Satan had thrown the temptation in his way. There is no occasion
for such superfluous labour, nor does the arch-fiend throw any of his
labour away. Your Peter Pures may be very well left to themselves, and
are left to themselves; their own inventions are quite sufficient for
all their trading purposes; there is no need to put temptations in their
way--they will seek them of themselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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