So far, therefore, as economy goes, this Continentalizing has not succeeded up to this. Instead of living rent free at Dodsborough, with our own mutton and turnips, the ducks and peas, that cost us, I may say, nothing, here we are, keeping up the price of foreign markets, and feeding the foreigners at the expense of our own poor people. If, instead of excluding British manufactures from the Continent, Bony had only struck out the notion of seducing over here John Bull himself and his family, let me assure you, Tom, that he'd have done us far more lasting and irreparable mischief. We can do without their markets. What between their Zollvereins, their hostile tariffs, and troublesome trade restrictions, they have themselves taught us to do without them; and, indeed, except when we get up a row at Barcelona, and smuggle five or six hundred thousand pounds' worth of goods into Spain, we care little for the old Continent; but I 'll tell you what we cannot do without,--we cannot do without their truffled turkeys, their tenors, their men-cooks, and their dancing-women. French novels and Italian knavery have got a fast hold of us; and I doubt much if the polite world of England would n't rather see this country cut off from all the commerce of America than be themselves excluded from the wicked old cities of Europe! When I think of myself holding these opinions, and still living abroad, I almost fancy I was meant for a Parliamentary life; for assuredly my convictions and my actions are about as contradictory as any honorable or right honorable gentleman on either side of the House. But so it is, Tom. Whatever 's the reason of it I can't tell, but I believe in my heart that every Irishman is always doing something or other that he doesn't approve of; and that this is the real secret of that want of conduct, deficient steadiness, uncertainty of purpose, and all the other faults that our polite neighbors ascribe to us, and what the "Times" has a word of its own for, and sets shortly down as "Celtic barbarism." And between ourselves, the "Times" is too fond of blackguarding us. What's the use of it? What good does it ever do? I may throw mud at a man every day till the end of the world, but I 'll never make his face the cleaner for it!