_Irishman._--“You are very indulgent, gentlemen; but in spite of all your politeness, you must allow, or, at least, I must confess, that there are little defects in the Irish government of the tongue at which even _whole_-witted people must laugh.” _Scotchman._--“The well-educated people in all countries, I believe, escape the particular accent, and avoid the idiom, that are characteristic of the vulgar.” _Irishman._--“But even when we escape Irish brogue, we cannot escape Irish bulls.” _Englishman._--“You need not say _Irish_ bulls with such emphasis; for bulls are not peculiar to Ireland. I have been informed by a person of unquestionable authority, that there is a town in Germany, Hirschau, in the Upper Palatinate, where the inhabitants are famous for making bulls.” _Irishman._--“I am truly glad to hear we have companions in disgrace. Numbers certainly lessen the effect of ridicule as well as of shame: but, after all, the Irish idiom is peculiarly unfortunate, for it leads perpetually to blunder.” _Scotchman._--“I have heard the same remarked of the Hebrew. I am told that the Hebrew and Irish idiom are much alike.” _Irishman (laughing)._--“That is a great comfort to us, certainly, particularly to those amongst us who are fond of tracing our origin up to the remotest antiquity; but still there are many who would willingly give up the honour of this high alliance to avoid its inconveniences; for my own part, if I could ensure myself and my countrymen from all future danger of making bulls and blunders, I would this instant give up all Hebrew roots; and even the Ogham character itself I would renounce, ‘to make assurance doubly sure.’” _Englishman.--_“‘To make _assurance doubly sure._’ Now there is an example in our great Shakspeare of what I have often observed, that we English allow our poets and ourselves a licence of speech that we deny to our Hibernian neighbours. If an Irishman, instead of Shakspeare, had talked of making ‘assurance doubly sure,’ we should have asked how that could be. The vulgar in England are too apt to catch at every slip of the tongue made by Irishmen. I remember once being present when an Irish nobleman, of talents and literature, was actually hissed from the hustings at a Middlesex election because in his speech he happened to say, ‘We have laid the root to the axe of the tree of liberty,’ instead of ‘we have laid the axe to the root of the tree.’” Scotchman,--“A lapsus linguae, that might have been made by the greatest orators, ancient or modern; by Cicero or Chatham, by Burke, or by ‘the fluent Murray.’” Englishman,--“Upon another occasion I have heard that an Irish orator was silenced with ‘_inextinguishable_ laughter’ merely for saying, ‘I am sorry to hear my honourable friend stand mute.’”