You drop your purse in the street.  A rogue picks it up.  In his private conscience he says, “Honesty is a very good thing, perhaps, but it is by no means the best policy,—­it is simply no policy at all,—­it is sheer stupidity.  What can be more politic than for me to pocket this windfall and turn the corner quick?”—­So preacheth his crooked fag-end of a conscience, that very, very small still voice, in very husky tones; but he knows that a policeman, walking behind him, saw him pick up the purse, which alters the case,—­which, in fact, completely sets aside his fag-end of a husky-voiced conscience, and makes virtue his necessity, and necessity his virtue.  External morality is hastily drawn on as a decent overcoat to hide the tag-rags of his roguishness, while he magnanimously restores the purse to the owner.

Jones left his umbrella in a cab one night.  Discovering that he hadn’t it under his arm, he rushed after the cabman; but he was gone.  Jones had his number, however, and with it proceeded the next day to the police-office, feeling sure that he would find his umbrella there.  And there, in a closet appropriated to articles left in hackney-coaches,—­a perfect limbo of canes, parasols, shawls, pocket-books, and what-not,—­he found it, ticketed and awaiting its lawful owner.  The explanation of which mystery is, that the cabmen in Grindwell are strictly amenable to the police for any departure from the system which provides for the security of private property, and a yearly reward is given to those of the coach-driving fraternity who prove to be the most faithful restorers of articles left in their carriages.  Surely, the result of system can no farther go than this,—­that Monsieur Vaurien’s moral sense, like his opinions, should be absorbed and overruled by the governing powers.

What a capital thing it is to have the great governmental head and heart thinking and feeling for us!  Why, even the little boys, on winter afternoons, are restricted by the policemen from sliding on the ice in the streets, for fear the impetuous little fellows should break or dislocate some of their bones, and the hospital might have the expense of setting them; so patriarchal a regard has the machine for its young friends!

I might allude here to a special department of the machine, which once had great power in overruling the thoughts and consciences of the people, and which is still considered by some as not altogether powerless.  I refer to the Ecclesiastic department of the Grindwell works.  This was formerly the greatest labor-saving machinery ever invented.  But however powerful the operation of the Church machinery upon the grandmothers and grandfathers of the modern Grindwellites, it has certainly fallen greatly into disuse, and is kept a-going now more for the sake of appearances than for any real efficacy.  The most knowing ones think it rather old-fashioned and cumbrous,—­at any rate, not comparable to the State machinery, either