there weren't such a thing as a member of Parliament. Purity and
pickpockets is about the same. When I'm among 'em I buttons up my
breeches-pockets."

"But what can we do?" asked Mr. Trigger again, in a voice of woe. Mr.
Trigger quite sympathised with his elder friend; but, being a younger
man, he knew that these innovations must be endured.

Then Mr. Pile made a speech, of such length that he had never been
known to make the like before;--so that Mr. Trigger felt that things
had become very serious, and that, not impossibly, Mr. Pile might be
so affected by this election as never again to hold up his head in
Percycross. "Purity! Purity!" he repeated. "They're a going on that
way, Trigger, that the country soon won't be fit for a man to live
in. And what's the meaning of it all? It's just this,--that folks
wants what they wants without paying for it. I hate Purity, I do. I
hate the very smell of it. It stinks. When I see the chaps as come
here and talk of Purity, I know they mean that nothing ain't to be as
it used to be. Nobody is to trust no one. There ain't to be nothing
warm, nor friendly, nor comfortable any more. This Sir Thomas you've
brought down is just as bad as that shoemaking chap;--worse if
anything. I know what's a going on inside him. I can see it. If a man
takes a glass of wine out of his bottle, he's a asking hisself if
that ain't bribery and corruption! He's got a handle to his name, and
money, I suppose, and comes down here without knowing a chick or a
child. Why isn't a poor man, as can't hardly live, to have his three
half-crowns or fifteen shillings, as things may go, for voting for a
stranger such as him? I'll tell you what it is, Trigger, I've done
with it. Things have come to that in the borough, that I'll meddle
and make no more." Mr. Trigger, as he listened to this eloquence,
could only sigh and shake his head. "I did think it would last my
time," added Mr. Pile, almost weeping.

Moggs would steal out of the house in the early morning, look up at
the big bright red letters, and rejoice in his very heart of hearts.
He had not lived in vain, when his name had been joined, in the
public view of men, with words so glorious. Purity and the Rights of
Labour! "It contains just everything," said Moggs to himself as he
sat down to his modest, lonely breakfast. After that, sitting with
his hands clasped upon his brow, disdaining the use of pen and paper
for such work, he composed his speech for the e