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PDF Doctor, you shall be satisfied—I’ll
be in parliament in a
month—I’ll
be prime minister—LORD HIGH TREASURER of
ENGLAND—or, CHANCELLOR
of the EXCHEQUER!
SUBTLE.
Oh, by all means CHANCELLOR
of the EXCHEQUER! You are somewhat
young indeed—but
that’s no objection.—Damn me, if the
office
can ever be so respectably
filled as by an angry boy.
KASTRIL.
True, true.—But,
doctor, we forget your instructions all this
time.—Let me see—Ay—first
was the QUARREL PREVENTIVE.
SUBTLE.
Well thought of!—Why, sir, in your new office you will be liable to all sorts of attacks—Ministers always are, and an angry boy cannot hope to escape.—Now nothing, you know, is so much to the purpose as to have the first blow—Blunders are very natural.—Your friends tell one story in the upper house, and you another in the lower—You shall give up a territory to the enemy that you ought to have kept, and when charged with it, shall unluckily drop that you and your colleagues were ignorant of the geography of the country—You foresee an attack—you immediately open—Plans so extensively beneficial—accounts so perfectly consistent—measures so judicious and accurate—no man can question—no man can object to—but a rascal and a knave.—Let him come forward!
KASTRIL.
Very good! very good!—For the QUARREL OPSTREPEROUS, that I easily conceive.—An antagonist objects shrewdly—I cannot invent an answer.—In that case, there is nothing to be done but to drown his reasons in noise—nonsense—and vociferation.
SUBTLE.
Come to my arms, my dear Kastril!
O thou art an apt
scholar—thou wilt
be nonpareil in the art of brawling!—But
for
the QUARREL SENSITIVE—
KASTRIL.
Ay, that I confess I don’t understand.
SUBTLE.
Why, it is thus, my dear boy—A minister is apt to be sore.—Every man cannot have the phlegm of Burleigh.—And an angry boy is sorest of all.—In that case—an objection is made that would dumbfound any other man—he parries it with—my honour—and my integrity—and the rectitude of my intentions—my spotless fame—my unvaried truth—and the greatness of my abilities—And so gives no answer at all.
KASTRIL.
Excellent! excellent!
SUBTLE.
The QUARREL OBLIQUE is easy enough.—It is only to talk in general terms of places and pensions—the loaves and the fishes—a struggle for power—a struggle for power—And it will do excellent well, if at a critical moment—you can throw in a hint of some forty or fifty millions unaccounted for by some people’s grandfathers and uncles dead fifty years ago.
KASTRIL.
Ha! ha! ha!
SUBTLE.
