He received me with great hauteur, read the note, and said, ‘Mr. Foolscap has told you we are in want of a hand, and he thinks you have a turn in the moral line: I shall not be sorry if it prove so, for we have been very ill provided in that way a long while; and though morals are not much in demand among our patrons and customers, and will not do, by any means, for a standing dish, they make, nevertheless, a very pretty seasoning for our politics, in cases where they might otherwise be rather unpalatable and hard of digestion. You see this pile of pamphlets, these volumes of poetry, and this rascally quarto: all these, though under very different titles, and the productions of very different orders of mind, have, either openly or covertly, only one object; and a most impertinent one it is. This object is twofold: first, to prove the existence, to an immense extent, of what these writers think proper to denominate political corruption; secondly, to convince the public that this corruption ought to be extinguished. Now, we are anxious to do away the effect of all these incendiary clamours. As to the existence of corruption (it is a villainous word, by the bye—we call it _persuasion in a tangible shape_): as to the existence, then, of _persuasion in a tangible shape_, we do not wish to deny it; on the contrary, we have no hesitation in affirming that it is _as notorious as the sun at noonday_: but as to the inference that it ought to be extinguished—that is the point against which we direct the full fire of our critical artillery; we maintain that it ought to exist; and here is the leading article of our next number, in which we confound in one mass all these obnoxious publications, putting the weakest at the head of the list, that if any of our readers should feel inclined to judge for themselves (I must do them the credit to say I do not suspect many of them of such a democratical propensity), they may be stopped _in limine_, by finding very little temptation to proceed. The political composition of this article is beautiful; it is the production of a gentleman high in office, who is indebted to _persuasion in a tangible shape_ for his present income of several thousands per annum; but it wants, as I have hinted, a little moral seasoning; and there, as ill-luck will have it, we are all thrown out. We have several reverend gentlemen in our corps, but morals are unluckily quite out of their way. We have, on some occasions, with their assistance, substituted theology for morals; they manage this very cleverly, but I am sorry to say it only takes among the old women; and though the latter are our best and most numerous customers, yet we have some very obstinate and hard-headed readers who will not, as I have observed, swallow our politics without a little moral seasoning; and, as I told Mr. Foolscap, if we did not contrive to pick up a spice of morals somewhere or other, all the eloquence of _persuasion in a tangible shape_ would soon become of