The
ministers too have their state dinners, where all important questions
are considered before they are submitted to the grand council of the
nation. The bishops dine in holy ~87~~conclave to benefit Christianity,
and moralize over Champagne on the immorality of mankind. The judges
dine with the lord chancellor on the first day of term, and try their
powers of mastication before they proceed to try the merits of their
fellow citizens' causes. A lawyer must eat his way to the bar, labouring
most voraciously through his commons dinners in the Temple or Lincoln's
Inn Halls, before he has any chance of success in common law, common
pleas, or common causes in the court of King's Bench or Chancery. The
Speaker's parliamentary dinners are splendid spreads for poor senators;
but sometimes the feast is infested with rats, whom his majesty's royal
rat-catcher immediately cages, and contrives, by the aid of a blue
or red ribband, to render extremely useful and docile. Your orthodox
ministers dine on tithes, turtle, and Easter offerings, until they
become as sleek as their own velvet cushions, and eke from charity to
mankind almost as red in the face from the ruby tint of red port,
and the sorrowful recollections of sin and death. The methodist and
sectarians have their pious love feasts--bachelor's fare, bread and
butter and kisses, with a dram of comfort at parting, I suppose.
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