_The Rival Orator_ (_fluently, and with much enjoyment of his own eloquence_). I shall preface what I have to say by protesting in the strongest terms at my disposal against the most disgraceful attack we have had the pain of listening to to-night, against the character of a Statesman we all revere, by the unspeakably offensive and degraded individual with a black coat, a clean collar, and only one lung, who has just concluded his contemptible remarks, and is now debasing himself, if possible, still further by going round cringing, actually cringing, for the miserable halfpence which he hopes his foul-mouthed virulence will extract from the more foolish among his hearers! (_Applause at this spirited opening; the_ First Orator _imperturbably continues to protrude his hat_.) I have no hesitation in saying that if such language as he has favoured us with was uttered against a public man in any other community, in any other country, in any other hemisphere in the civilized globe, the audience would have risen in righteous indignation, and chased the cowardly aggressor back to the vile den from whose obscurity he would have done better never to emerge! Gentlemen, he has appealed to your sympathy on the ground, forsooth, that he has only one lung! I venture to assert that it is nothing short of a public calamity that he _is_ the possessor of one lung; for had he none at all, he would have been incapable of outraging the general intelligence by the utterance of such sentiments as he has disgusted you by this evening. When I first became acquainted with this man, before he had sunk into the besotted state in which he now wallows, he used, I remember, to condemn the practice of making a public collection. Now I've never been against that practice myself. _I_ hold that a man who is capable of attracting an audience by such gifts of oratory as he may possess, is perfectly justified in making a collection afterwards, whether he requires the money or not. But this person has become so degraded, so destitute of any sense of honour, so soaked and sodden with gin, that he now turns round on the principles he once professed, and is to be seen going round with a hat laden with the coppers of those who are infinitely worse off than--judging from his dress and prosperous appearance--he evidently is himself! _The First Orator_ (_exhibiting his empty hat_). It don't look much like it at present, GABBITT! _Mr. Gabbitt._ He has boasted to you of having rich relations, and said he scorned to apply to them. I want to know why, instead of coming here begging to you, he _don't_ go to them? _The First Orator._ I've _been_, GABBITT.