CHAPTER X.

MORE MISFORTUNES ARISING FROM THE INABILITY OF PUTTING OLD HEADS ON YOUNG SHOULDERS.A SHOW AD CAPTANDUM VULGUS, AND SLIGHTS OF HAND BY A WELL-KNOWN MOUNTEBANK: A GENUINE ANECDOTE.

THE Manor of Freeland, at this time, resembled a vessel at sea without either rudder or compass. After Brush was gone, the main hinge of the door was broken off, and the door itself, dragging enormous ruin with it, threatened to fall on the devoted heads of the Freelanders. Whoever had carefully explored the regions of history, must have observed, that where nations are running to decay, there are certain infallible prognostics of the approaching ruin; men let every thing go to fortune, or, as the more forcible expression of the vulgar tongue has it, run to the Devil, like sailors, who when they see all their efforts to keep the ship from drifting on a lee

shore ineffectual, desist from labour, and plunder the store-rooms, to drown with intoxicating spirits the thoughts of approaching annihilation. Nations are but larger kinds of manors, and this was exactly the state of the manor of Freeland. Every one had some machine ready to force the public store-rooms; all appeared eager for plunder, and, as will always happen in troublesome time, the scum was uppermost. The situ ation of the ship became every day more critical, and they knew not of any skill in their untried pilots which could restore them to any thing like confidence:

"Each petty hand

Can steer a ship becalm'd; but he, that will
Govern and carry her to his ends, must know
His tides, his currents; how to shift his sails;
What she will bear in foul, what in fair, weather;

Where her springs are, her leaks; and how to stop them;
What sands, what shelves, what rocks, do threaten her;
The forces and the natures of all winds,

Gusts, storms, and tempests; when her keel ploughs hell And deck knocks heav'n; then, then to manage her Becomes the name and office of a pilot."

JOHNSON'S CATILINE.

Now the Freeland pilot was but a petty hand

and had never before been master of a cockboat, and all his hands were, as the sailors say, only a parcel of land-lubbers.

The negociation for peace, which Brush had been carrying on with every prospect of success, was soon knocked on the head after his departure; the rest of the household attempted to walk in his shoes, but they were too big for them, and threw them down at every step. The Bantam, who had felt some awe of the talents of Brush, thought he might profit more by the inexperience of his successors in war, than by a peace. He marched on to new conquests, and, as we have already mentioned, he drove Eagle Frederic out of the cock-pit by a single blow. Then following the bent of his implacable hatred towards Freeland, for the gratification of which he minded no sacrifice of honour, honesty, and blood, and would have agonized the universe, he fell upon some neutral places on the edge of the moat, on his own side of it, by means of which the Freelanders still carried on their trade, and seized and confiscated all their property. When the inhabitants of one of the most considerable places waited upon him to point out that he was

injuring the tenants of his own manor as well as those of Freeland, as through their means all the remaining trade of that quarter was carried on to the great advantage of the Gulls, as well as of their enemies, and that if he persisted in shutting up their port, trade would be annihilated: the little tyrant replied, that that was exactly what he wished; there should be no trade; it were better there were none than that it should be monopolized by the Freelanders. So desperately may the Times be ridden by one of the most contemptible_creatures existing in them! The Freelanders felt the effects of his envy, and the stagnation of their trade seemed to have stunned them for a while. They were like Hudibras:

"Whose only solace was that now
His dog-bolt fortune was so low,
That either it must quickly end,

Or turn about again and mend."

But recollecting that their chief dependence was on themselves, they soon regained their usual spirit of enterprize, and convinced the Bantam that, like Antæus, the earth was their parent, and renewed their vigour whenever they were

brought down to it. This was not fabulous, but literally true. Whilst their agricultural industry supplied their manufactures, and theirs supplied the work, nothing but the grossest mismanagement of their affairs could make bankrupts of them; nought but the corruption of their own representatives could make slaves of them.

But this corruption did really exist to a most dreadful and alarming degree, and was muchmuch more to be deprecated than the force of any foreign power. We must now, unwillingly, and with a degree of loathsomeness, proceed to give some few examples of it.

In the midst of this gloom, another show sprang up for the public diversion; we call it a show, for it really was one. Although the occasion was the solemn exercise of the grand and almost only remaining privilege of the tenantry; yet by the ingenuity of the candidates and their supporters, the corruption on one side and the popular indignation on the other, it was more vilely burlesqued than ever was one of Shakspeare's finest tragedies at Bartholomew or any other fair.

But as a little trifling entertainment