calls dry reasoning from incontrovertible premisses. If I have fairly taught him that his sarcasm will not succeed, I hope he will find that his wit's end is his logic's beginning.
I now reply to a question I have been asked again and again since my last Budget appeared:—Why do you take so much trouble to expose such a reasoner as Mr. Smith? I answer as a deceased friend of mine used to answer on like occasions—A man's capacity is no measure of his power to do mischief. Mr. Smith has untiring energy, which does something; self-evident honesty of conviction, which does more; and a long purse, which does most of all. He has made at least ten publications, full of figures which few readers can criticize. A great many people are staggered to this extent, that they imagine there must be the indefinite something in the mysterious all this. They are brought to the point of suspicion that the mathematicians ought not to treat 'all this' with such undisguised contempt, at least. Now I have no fear for ; but I do think it possible that general opinion might in time demand that the crowd of circle-squarers, &c. should be admitted to the honours of opposition and this would be a time-tax of five per cent., one man with another, upon those who are better employed. Mr. James Smith may be made useful, in hands which understand how to do it, towards preventing such opinion from growing. A speculator who expressly assumes what he wants to prove, and argues that all which contradicts it is absurd, because it cannot stand side by side with his assumption, is a case which can be exposed to all. And the best person to expose it is one who has lived in the past as well as the present, who takes misthinking from points of view which none but a student of history can occupy, and who has something of a turn for the business.
Whether I have any motive but public good must be referred to those who can decide whether a missionary chooses his pursuit solely to convert the heathen. I shall certainly be thought to have a little of the spirit of Col. Quagg, who delighted in strapping the Grace-walking Brethren. I must quote this myself: if I do not, some one else will, and then where am I? The Colonel's principle is described as follows:—
I licks ye because I kin, and because I like, and because ye'se critters that licks is good for. Skins ye have on, and skins I'll have off; hard or soft, wet or dry, spring or fall. Walk in grace if ye like till pumpkins is peaches; but licked ye must be till your toe-nails drop off and your noses bleed blue ink.' And—licked—they—were—accordingly.'
