Thank heaven and the printer that there are such things as ---- ----! You, my dear friend, will know to whom they apply, and may therefore receive this letter without its bringing down upon you the Government of Naples. However, don’t venture to write me any answer, for I’m in Sir James Graham’s books; I’m down--a marked man. Unhappily for me, a Polish refugee lives in our garret, and the eye of Russia is upon me. Nevertheless, there has been, I find, some good-luck in this. I’ve now discovered that the two gentlemen with beards, who used to hire me when the Emperor Nicholas was here, to drive them from one end of the town to the other, did so to come at the plot which was hatching in our attic. However, they got nothing out of me but, as old Lumpy says, _wicey-warsy_. Still I’m not comfortable. As a cabman, I’ve been boxed up with Spaniards, Italians, Sardinians, Austrians--men of all countries and colours. Well, I don’t know at this moment that every letter to Juniper Hedgehog--that is, every copy--isn’t in the office of Sir James Graham. A nice thing this to go to bed and sleep upon! When I think of the sort of letters--full of delicate and tender matters--that has come to me, I own it does make me burn and fluster to think that I may not have a single secret to myself: no, Sir James--the Post-Office burglar--has broken into my affairs, and at this moment he knows all my poverty, all my little strugglings with little debts--in fact, all my inner man. I seem to myself to walk about the world turned inside out! And this evil, be it remembered, may be the fate of thousands, although, poor wretches, they may not know it. Who shall tell how many men’s souls are at the Home Office, under the Graham lock and key? Still, says Sir James, the whole security, not only of _this_ country, but, in truth, of the whole world, depends upon wax and wafers. There is no doubt that last summer a few Italians were denounced to the Government of Naples, and duly shot, in consequence of seals broken at Downing Street. This is comfortable to reflect upon. Though if Sir James was a squeamish man--which he is not, for no man ever braved the pillory with all its unsavoury accidents with a stronger stomach--then would he never again behold the Queen’s head upon the red post-stamp without thinking of human blood! Sir James, however, has two natures, or rather two parts. Like the picture of Death and the Lady, Sir James is only corrupt on one side. Thus spoke Tom Duncombe to the foolscap burglar--the sealing-wax Jack Sheppard: “He has had the meanness, ay, and the baseness, to conceal his act and has not had the courage to avow it.”