office
can ever be so respectably filled as by an angry boy.

KASTRIL.

True, true.--But, doctor, we forget your instructions all this
time.--Let me see--Ay--first was the QUARREL PREVENTIVE.

SUBTLE.

Well thought of!--Why, sir, in your new office you will be
liable to all sorts of attacks--Ministers always are, and an
angry boy cannot hope to escape.--Now nothing, you know, is so
much to the purpose as to have the first blow--Blunders are very
natural.--Your friends tell one story in the upper house, and
you another in the lower--You shall give up a territory to the
enemy that you ought to have kept, and when charged with it,
shall unluckily drop that you and your colleagues were ignorant
of the geography of the country--You foresee an attack--you
immediately open--Plans so extensively beneficial--accounts so
perfectly consistent--measures so judicious and accurate--no man
can question--no man can object to--but a rascal and a
knave.--Let him come forward!

KASTRIL.

Very good! very good!--For the QUARREL OPSTREPEROUS, that I
easily conceive.--An antagonist objects shrewdly--I cannot
invent an answer.--In that case, there is nothing to be done but
to drown his reasons in noise--nonsense--and vociferation.

SUBTLE.

Come to my arms, my dear Kastril! O thou art an apt
scholar--thou wilt be nonpareil in the art of brawling!--But for
the QUARREL SENSITIVE--

KASTRIL.

Ay, that I confess I don't understand.

SUBTLE.

Why, it is thus, my dear boy--A minister is apt to be
sore.--Every man cannot have the phlegm of Burleigh.--And an
angry boy is sorest of all.--In that case--an objection is made
that would dumbfound any other man--he parries it with--my
honour--and my integrity--and the rectitude of my intentions--my
spotless fame--my unvaried truth--and the greatness of my
abilities--And so gives no answer at all.

KASTRIL.

Excellent! excellent!

SUBTLE.

The QUARREL OBLIQUE is easy enough.--It is only to talk in
general terms of places and pensions--the loaves and the
fishes--a struggle for power--a struggle for power--And it will
do excellent well, if at a critical moment--you can throw in a
hint of some forty or fifty millions unaccounted for by some
people's grandfathers and uncles d