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charged with shoplifting, be fashionably attired, and in affluent circumstances, she is addressed as Mrs. Jenkins, and accommodated with a chair and a glass of water. The magistrate laments that an investigation should be called for, and casts a furtive glance to his private room. The witnesses are in this case persons whose testimony must be received with exceeding caution. They have something suspicious in their aspects; while the prisoner at the bar, or rather the "party accused," looks so very respectable. At every serious turn of the disclosure, he ejaculates, "The party is so respectable; it's a pity!"

But there is one class of persons whom he particularly holds up for the reprobation of mankind; the people who don't come forward to prosecute. This he regards as a moral offence of the blackest dye: nothing provokes him so much. Trial by jury is so excellent an institution that it ought to be encouraged. The prisoner, he assumes, has faithfully done his duty; and shame be on the prosecutor who neglects his own.

THE BORROWER.

THE borrower, with admirable consistency of character, borrows his motto from Shakspeare, "Base is the slave who pays!" He understands the meaning of the verb "to give," as in the case of a political subscription or a charitable donation, of which lists are published in the papers. Generous people give; poor-spirited people pay. He looks He looks upon himself as a professor of the most ancient and noble art extant, the art of borrowing. He is proud to call himself an Englishman, because the said art has here been cultivated beyond any other. In modern times, more especially, it has been brought

almost to perfection; and has been so closely studied and so fondly cherished by statesmen and economists, that it may justly lay claim to be distinguished as the great national art. Mr. Pitt is, of course, his beau-ideal of a minister; and he holds Britannia to be the envy of surrounding nations by virtue of her having been able to get her acceptances discounted to the extent of eight hundred millions. He thinks it the duty of every subject living under such a state to follow the state's example; and as he preaches, so he practises.

By the art of borrowing, he of course means borrowing money. All other loans he despises except in cases of extremity, as misapplications of great powers, and as tending to bring a great principle into a familiarity which breeds contempt. To be sure, the man who borrows ready-made articles is no fool, but he is a small dealer, and generally disgraces the art. What can he promise himself? What does he attain to? He can seldom get beyond a set of books, an umbrella, or a great-coat this is poor work, and renders borrowing a bore to both parties. The highest achievement in this department is a horse and gig; and what can you do with it when you have got it? A borrower cannot afford to injure his credit by driving anything so suspicious as a gig; and to sell a borrowed one for even twice as much as it is worth is an offence against the laws a borrower of this stamp can hardly pretend to more sagacity than a lender. Borrowing a house, ready furnished, of course, for the season, or a sailing-boat for a month, may be a more respectable course, and it occasionally receives high sanction; but in the end both the villa and the vessel must be delivered back to the right owners (as the phrase is), which, to a borrower of the smallest susceptibility of feeling, is always unpleasant.

Money alone, the sure means of purchasing pleasures of any pattern; the medium for the exercise of our own free will; the power of defying the world;

"The glorious privilege

Of being independent;"

this alone is worthy the great soul, the proud purpose, the noble ambition of the enlightened borrower; he should, as Cobbett used to say, "get gold and keep it." He will take good care, at all events, if he have the least pretensions to honour, never to pay it back.

We have already intimated that to pay back money is inconsistent with the principle of borrowing; but a different doctrine, we are aware, has been craftily broached in some quarters, and a different practice in some cases prevails. Borrowers of some credit and character are now and then known to create much disappointment by actually returning the money, by observing their "promise to pay" to the letter, and thereby violating the spirit of it. This occurs in cases where, a small sum having been lent, there is thought to be no chance of extorting the loan of a large one but by the repayment of the trifle. Convenient as the plan may be, and at first sight it seems defensible enough, it is in point of fact tampering with an essential principle. It is a descent from the high to the middle ground; it countenances the fatal doctrine of expediency, and compromises an intrinsic right.

The high-minded borrower is proof against the plausibility of this practice. He is not of opinion that the end justifies the means. He never can be persuaded, under any circumstances whatever, to violate the first rule of his art. All that he ever hazards doing in this way, is to write to you to advance him a good round sum, requesting that you will deduct what he owes you

from the amount. His maxim is the earliest flush of youth; at the dawn of life, when the mind, conscious of its purity, yet sensible of its frailty, looks out into the great world of morals, and takes to itself some settled line by which its true guidance may be ensured, and its youthful rectitude preserved; even then, ere yet he had ventured into the moneyed world, or whispered for the first time his want of a loan; his maxim was, "No money to be returned." What was adopted by the enthusiasm of youth shall be adhered to by the experience of age. No sophistry, no tenet of expediency, no suggestion of convenience ever succeeds in inducing him to pay back the money he has borrowed: he would as soon think of turning lender. He gets his gold by fair play, and he keeps it upon a defined principle. He acts upon an upright and very simple system, that of never taking a denial; he asks, and asks for ever, but is always accommodating; he wants seventy pounds, but he will put up with fifteen, and take your bill for the rest; or he will call to-morrow, or on Friday, for the balance. He is not particular about guineas; make it pounds, and he will cheerfully allow the shillings as discount. If you regret that you cannot accommodate him on the instant, he merely inquires when you can; next week will do for him. If you cannot possibly name a time and see no likelihood, then he can but drop in and take his chance; and, in the meantime, you will just be so good as to give him a note of introduction to Mr. Loosecash, your agent in Lothbury.

Such is his urbanity that you cannot offend him; you are "not at home" to him three times a-day for a whole week, but on the eighth morning he meets you coming out, and presses your hand with as much fervour as if it had just written him a cheque. His disinterestedness is equally conspicuous; give him your acceptance for a

hundred, and you may have his for a thousand at what date you will. He is the first to rejoice at the repeal of the usury-laws, because he can now offer you your own terms; one rate of per centage is the same thing to him as another. And let it not be insinuated to his dispraise that he was ever known to break faith with you. His frank and emphatic "Of course" in reply to your doubtful, drawling "May I depend upon you?" means just what it says. If you cannot depend upon the man who never means to pay, where can you rest dependance? Would you rely on him who is trusting to a mere endeavour, to that rope of sand, a good intention? on one who will certainly pay you if he can! No, here there can be no dependance. But on him who, like the sentimental traveller, is predetermined not to give you a single sous, you may rest an unhesitating reliance. A resolution to pay is scratched on glass, a determination not to pay is cut in marble.

The Borrower is a vehement advocate for the strict administration of all laws conservative of property. He is a deadly enemy to the swindler. His soul sickens at the sight of a pickpocket. Even forgery, though more genteel, he denounces as infamously unfair. All these pursuits, he contends, militate against the successful practice of borrowing, and all might be more profitably and peaceably carried on upon the principles of that art. He insists that in a free country no man should be plundered without his consent, but that at the same time every man has a right to be robbed if he likes. He is arbitrary in his judgments upon vagrants and other riff-raff; he has no pity for the poor: fellows who pay their way while they can, and when they can't, take to stealing; who know nothing of the golden mean; who have probably "frittered their money away in paying their debts," when, by spending it rationally, they might

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