Sir Per.  Conscience! why, you are mad! did you ever hear any man talk of conscience in political matters?  Conscience, quotha?  I have been in Parliament these three and thraty years, and never heard the term made use of before:—­sir, it is an unparliamentary word, and you will be laughed at for it;—­therefore I desire you will not offer to impose upon me with sic phantoms, but let me know your reason for thus slighting my friends and disobeying my commands.—­Sir, give me an immediate and an explicit answer.

Eger.  Then, sir, I must frankly tell you, that you work against my nature; you would connect me with men I despise, and press me into measures I abhor; would make me a devoted slave to selfish leaders, who have no friendship but in faction—­no merit but in corruption—­nor interest in any measure, but their own;—­and to such men I cannot submit; for know, sir, that the malignant ferment which the venal ambition of the times provokes in the heads and hearts of other men, I detest.

Sir Per.  What are you about, sir? malignant ferment! and venal ambition!  Sir, every man should be ambitious to serve his country—­and every man should be rewarded for it:  and pray, sir, would nai you wish to serve your country?  Answer me that.—­I say, would nai you wish to serve your country?

Eger.  Only shew me how I can serve my country, and my life is hers.  Were I qualified to lead her armies, to steer her fleets, and deal her honest vengeance on her insulting foes;—­or could my eloquence pull down a state leviathan, mighty by the plunder of his country—­black with the treasons of her disgrace, and send his infamy down to a free posterity, as a monumental terror to corrupt ambition, I would be foremost in such service, and act it with the unremitting ardour of a Roman spirit.

Sir Per.  Vary weel, sir! vary weel! the fellow is beside himself!

Eger.  But to be a common barker at envied power—­to beat the drum of faction, and sound the trumpet of insidious patriotism, only to displace a rival,—­or to be a servile voter in proud corruption’s filthy train,—­to market out my voice, my reason, and my trust, to the party-broker, who best can promise, or pay for prostitution; these, sir, are services my nature abhors,—­for they are such a malady to every kind of virtue, as must in time destroy the fairest constitution that ever wisdom framed, or virtuous liberty fought for.

Sir Per.  Why, are you mad, sir? you have certainly been bit by some mad whig or other:  but now, sir, after aw this foul-mouthed frenzy, and patriotic vulgar intemperance, suppose we were to ask you a plain question or twa:  Pray, what single instance can you, or any man, give of the political vice or corruption of these days, that has nai been practised in the greatest states, and in the most virtuous times?  I challenge you to give me a single instance.

Eger.  Your pardon, sir—­it is a subject I wish to decline:  you know, sir, we never can agree about it.