Interest and Welfare; and teach me to use their Simplicity for the convenient furtherance of my own Cunning! Fill me with such necessary and becoming Arrogance as shall make me overbearingly insolent to Persons of Intellect, while yet retaining that sleek Affability which shall cause me to appear a Fawning Flunkey to Persons of Rank! Enable me to so condescendingly patronize the Electors who gave me their Majority that it shall seem I was returned through Merit only, and not through Bribes and Beer! And mercifully defend me, O Beneficent little Deity, from all possibility of ever being called upon to address the House! I am no speaker,—and even if I were, I have no Ideas whereon to hang a fustian sentence! Thou Knowest, All-Knowing-One, that I have not so much as an Opinion, save that it is good for me, in respect of Social Advantage, to write M.P. after my name! And surely Thou dost also know that I have paid Two Thousand Pounds for the purchase of this small portion of the Alphabet, making One Thousand Pounds per letter, which may humbly be submitted to Thee, O Calculating Ruler of Parliamentary Elections, as somewhat dear!
But I have accepted these Conditions and paid the Sum without murmuring; therefore of Thy goodness, be pleased to spare me from the utterance of even one word in the presence of my peers, concerning any Matter for the Advancement of Which I have been elected! For lo,—if I said as much as "Yea," it might be ill-advised; and yet again, if I said "Nay," it might be ill-timed! Inasmuch as I am compelled to rely on the Journalist and Press-Reporter before mentioned, for what-
