ace look as
raw as an ox-cheek upon a butcher's-stall; remember, I say, that there
are pillories and ducking-stools."*** With this away they flung, leaving
Mrs. Bull no time to reply. No stone was left unturned to frighten John
from his composition. Sometimes they spread reports at coffee-houses
that John and his wife were run mad; that they intended to give up
house, and make over all their estate to Lewis Baboon; that John had
been often heard talking to himself, and seen in the streets without
shoes or stockings; that he did nothing from morning till night but beat
his servants, after having been the best master alive. As for his wife,
she was a mere natural. Sometimes John's house was beset with a whole
regiment of attornies' clerks, bailiffs, and bailiffs' followers, and
other small retainers of the law, who threw stones at his windows, and
dirt at himself as he went along the street. When John complained of
want of ready-money to carry on his suit, they advised him to pawn his
plate and jewels, and that Mrs. Bull should sell her linen and wearing
clothes.

* Talk of peace, and the struggle of the party against it.

** The endeavours made use of to stop the Treaty of Peace.

*** Reflections upon the House of Commons as ignorant, who
know nothing of business.

CHAPTER XIII. Mrs. Bull's vindication of the indispensable duty
incumbent upon Wives in case of the Tyranny, Infidelity, or
Insufficiency of Husbands; being a full Answer to the Doctor's Sermon
against Adultery.*

* The Tories' representation of the speeches at Sacheverel's
trial.

John found daily fresh proofs of the infidelity and bad designs of his
deceased wife; amongst other things, one day looking over his cabinet,
he found the following paper:--

"It is evident that matrimony is founded upon an original contract,
whereby the wife makes over the right she has by the law of Nature in
favour of the husband, by which he acquires the property of all her
posterity. But, then, the obligation is mutual; and where the contract
is broken on one side it ceases to bind on the other. Where there is a
right there must be a power to maintain it and to punish the offending
party. This power I affirm to be that original right, or rather that
indispensable duty lodged in all wives in the cases above mentioned.
No wife is bound by any law to which herself has not consented. All
economical government is lodged originally in the hu