_Mr. Sarcastic._ Nothing, you well know, is so rare as the coincidence of theory and practice. A man who ‘will go through fire and water to serve a friend’ in words, will not give five guineas to save him from famine. A poet will write Odes to Independence, and become the obsequious parasite of any great man who will hire him. A burgess will hold up one hand for purity of election, while the price of his own vote is slily dropped into the other. I need not accumulate instances. _Mr. Forester._ You would find it difficult, I fear, to adduce many to the contrary. _Mr. Sarcastic._ This then is my system. I ascertain the practice of those I talk to, and present it to them as from myself, in the shape of theory; the consequence of which is, that I am universally stigmatised as a promulgator of rascally doctrines. Thus I said to Sir Oliver Oilcake, ‘When I get into Parliament I intend to make the sale of my vote as notorious as the sun at noonday. I will have no rule of right, but my own pocket. I will support every measure of every administration, even if they ruin half the nation for the purpose of restoring the Great Lama, or of subjecting twenty millions of people to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at the pleasure of the man-milliner of Mahomet’s mother. I will have shiploads of turtle and rivers of Madeira for myself, if I send the whole swinish multitude to draff and husks.’ Sir Oliver flew into a rage, and swore he would hold no further intercourse with a man who maintained such infamous principles. _Mr. Hippy._ Pleasant enough, to show a man his own picture, and make him damn the ugly rascal. _Mr. Sarcastic._ I said to Miss Pennylove, whom I knew to be _laying herself out for a good match_, ‘When my daughter becomes of marriageable age, I shall commission Christie to put her up to auction, “the highest bidder to be the buyer; and if any dispute arise between two or more bidders, the lot to be put up again and resold.”’ Miss Pennylove professed herself utterly amazed and indignant that any man, and a father especially, should imagine a scheme so outrageous to the dignity and delicacy of the female mind. _The Honourable Mrs. Pinmoney and Miss Danaretta._ A most horrid idea certainly. _Mr. Sarcastic._ The fact, my dear ladies, the fact; how stands the fact? Miss Pennylove afterwards married a man old enough to be her grandfather, for no other reason but because he was rich; and broke the heart of a very worthy friend of mine, to whom she had been previously engaged, who had no fault but the folly of loving her, and was quite rich enough for all purposes of matrimonial happiness. How the dignity and delicacy of such a person could have been affected, if the preliminary negotiation with her hobbling Strephon had been conducted through the instrumentality of honest Christie’s hammer, I cannot possibly imagine.