I address you, gentlemen, as an humble individual who is much concerned about the body. This little joke is purely a professional one. It must go no further. I am afraid the public thinks uncharitably of undertakers, and would consider it a proof that Dr. Johnson was right when he said that the man who would make a pun would pick a pocket. Well; we all try to do the best we can for ourselves,—everybody else as well as undertakers. Burials may be expensive, but so is legal redress. So is spiritual provision; I mean the maintenance of all our reverends and right reverends. I am quite sure that both lawyers’ charges and the revenues of some of the chief clergy are very little, if any, more reasonable than our own prices. Pluralities are as bad as crowded gravepits, and I don’t see that there is a pin to choose between the church and the churchyard. Sanitary revolutionists and incendiaries accuse us of gorging rottenness, and battening on corruption. We don’t do anything of the sort, that I see, to a greater extent than other professions, which are allowed to be highly respectable. Political military, naval, university, and clerical parties of great eminence defend abuses in their several lines when profitable. We can’t do better than follow such good examples. Let us stick up for business, and—I was going to say—leave society to take care of itself. No; that is just what we should endeavour to prevent society from doing. The world is growing too wise for us, gentlemen. Accordingly, this Interments Bill, by which our interests are so seriously threatened, has been brought into Parliament. We must join heart and hand to defeat and crush it. Let us nail our colours—which I should call the black flag—to the mast, and let our war-cry be, “No surrender!” or else our motto will very soon be, “Resurgam;” in other words, it will be all up with us. We stand in a critical position in regard to public opinion. In order to determine what steps to take for protecting business, we ought to see our danger. I wish, therefore, to state the facts of our case clearly to you; and I say let us face them boldly, and not blink them. Therefore, I am going to speak plainly and plumply on this subject.