“But why number examples? Why attempt to prove that which every man, if he would but consult the recesses of his own bosom, must truly know? Ask all the professions; demand of the lawyer, with yellow, studious cheek, wherefore he should coin gold out of little strips of paper, written over by youthful scribes at two or three shillings per diem. Request him to give you the philosophy of costs—the exquisite meaning of appearance and declaration, and reply and rejoinder, and all the thousand terms invented by the most cunning class of labourers, the overlookers at the building of Babel. Ask the sleek practitioner to what he owes his fortune. To common-sense—to justice—to the fair and rational barter of labour for shillings? If he be a hypocrite—if he be resolved to clap in with the world, and carry on a profitable duplicity, he will swell like a bull-frog at the query, and, forgetful of his knuckles, will strike his heart, answering with the big-mouthed ‘Yes!’ But if at the end of a long practice there should by miracle remain in that attorney’s bosom a throb of truth, he will blandly, yet significantly smile at the words—the counters men play with—common-sense and justice, and magnanimously and unblushingly declare his debt to—swindling! “Is it otherwise with the physician, who sells his guesses for truth, and doubts and doubts a patient into the grave, whilst his medicinal palm is open for the guinea? When the apothecary vends cinnamon and peppermint water for _elixir vitæ_, doth he practise a noble art? Yea; for, safely and successfully, he—swindles. “When the tradesman—his housemaid at the time perhaps in Bridewell for petty larceny committed on the greasepot—when he, smiling across the counter at his victim, puts off knowingly the poorest commodity at the highest price, how stands he in relation to his captive handmaid? Why, Rebecca has robbed, but the tradesman has only driven his trade: the slut has for ever and for ever lost her character, with it seven pounds _per annum_, and, it may be, tea and sugar included—but for Mr Jackson, her master, he has turned the profit penny; he has—but all in the way of business—swindled.” “It is very true,” exclaimed my father with an oath, “it is very true. When what is swindling isn’t swindling according to law, it’s a fortune to a man; but when it’s agin law, and found out——” “The result I know,” cried my uncle, a slight tint of red suffusing his manly cheek. “All mankind may be divided into two classes: the swindlers according to custom and to law, and the swindlers according to the bent of their natural genius.” “True agin,” cried my father, slapping his thigh.