This, her sirs, her lords, and her esquires did. "No suspicion of embezzlement attached!" when a company of more than two thousand were intrusted with money at discretion, they must indeed have been a rare lump of honesty if some few glasses of wine had not been taken out of it, to drink the Queen's health on their days of festivals, or a pound now and then to pay off some vexatious debt, &c. And who shall tell Government of that? shall the United Fraternity themselves do it?—shall the poor, who are powerless and unheeded, tell it? or shall "Common Fame," that random talking tell-tale, fly through the kingdom, and declare that Mr. ———, "head and ears in debt," suddenly came out "clear as a horn," that Mr. Somebody was fitting up his house, and where did he get his money? and that the cattle and horses of Farmer G ——— were getting fat and thriving astonishingly, &c.
It was my fortune to be placed in a position among all classes, acting isolated as I did, to see the inner court of some of these temples—(not of the Committees), with these my business ended when at Dublin. But I had boxes of clothing, and am obliged to acknowledge what common report says here, that the people of the higher classes in general showed a meanness bordering on dishonesty. When they saw a goodly garment, they not only appeared to covet, but they actually bantered, as though in a shop of second-hand articles, to get it as cheap as possible; and most, if not all of such, would have taken these articles without any equivalent, though they knew they were the
