bject'--that is, you don't
care one of your own figs what faction is uppermost--I request, as a
personal favour, your support for Mr. Sweepthedecks; and this I do the
more readily, that I know there is no chance of your being pre-engaged.
Now, you musn't refuse me, Bob, else you and I will positively quarrel;
for I have promised to secure you."

Here then, you see, my friends (said the melancholy gentleman), was
a climax. The unities in the system of persecution adopted against
me were strictly observed. There was beginning, middle, and end
complete--nothing wanting. Well--still determined to maintain my
neutrality--I wrote a note to my friend, expressing precisely the same
sentiments to which I have so often alluded. To this note I received no
answer; and can only conjecture the effect it had upon him by the
circumstance of his withdrawing his custom from me, and never again
entering my shop.

Observe, however, my friends (here said the melancholy gentleman), that,
in speaking of the persecutions I underwent on this occasion, I have
merely selected instances--you are by no means to understand that the
cases just mentioned included all the annoyance I met with on the
subject of my vote. Not at all. I have, as already said, merely
instanced these cases. I was assailed by scores of others in the same
way. Indeed, there was not a day, for upwards of three weeks, that I was
not badgered and abused by somebody or other--ay, and that too, in my
own shop. But my shop was now not worth keeping; for Whig, Tory, and
Radical had deserted me, and left me to the full enjoyment of my
reflections on the course I had pursued. In short, I found that, in
endeavouring to offend no one, I had offended everybody; and that, in
place of securing my own peace, I had taken the most effectual way I
possibly could to make myself unhappy.

Well, in the meantime, you see, my friends (continued the melancholy
gentleman), the election came on, and was gained by the Whig candidate.
The streets were on the occasion paraded by the partisans of each of the
parties; and, as is not unusual in such cases, there was a great deal of
mischief done, and of which, as a sufferer, I came in for a very liberal
share. The Whig mob attacked my shop, and demolished everything in it,
to celebrate their triumph, as they said, by plucking a _hen_--in other
words, one who would not support them. The Tory mob, again, attacked my
house, and smashed every one of my window