hed lying! What hypocrisy
of patriotism! What philippics, levelled in the very name of liberty,
against her sacred self! What orations on the benefit of starvation--on the
comeliness of rags! Have we not heard selfishness speaking with a syren
voice? Have we not seen the haggard face of state-craft rouged up into a
look of pleasantness and innocence? Have we not, night after night, seen
the national Jonathan Wilds meet to plan a robbery, and--the purse
taken--have they not rolled in their carriages home, with their fingers
smelling of the people's pockets?

UNICORN.--It's true--true as an Act of Parliament.

LION.--Then are we not obliged to be in the Courts of Law? In Chancery--to
see the golden wheat of the honest man locked in the granaries of
equity--granaries where deepest rats do most abound--whilst the slow fire
of famine shall eat the vitals of the despoiled; and it may be the man of
rightful thousands shall be carried to churchyard clay in parish deals?
Then in the Bench, in the Pleas--there we are too. And there, see we not
justice weighing cobwebs against truth, making too often truth herself kick
the beam?

UNICORN.--It has made me mad to see it.

LION.--Turn we to the Police-offices--there we are again. And there--good
God!--to see the arrogance of ignorance! To listen to the vapid joke of his
worship on the crime of beggary! To see the punishment of the poor--to mark
the sweet impunity of the rich! And then are we not in the Old Bailey--in
all the criminal courts! Have we not seen trials _after dinner_--have we
not heard sentences in which the bottle spoke more than the judge?

UNICORN.--Come, come, no libel on the ermine.

LION.--The ermine! In such cases, the fox--the pole-cat. Have we not seen
how the state makes felons, and then punishes them for evil-doing?

UNICORN.--We certainly have seen a good deal that way.

LION.--And then the motto we are obliged to look grave over!

UNICORN.--What _Dieu et mon droit!_ Yes, that does sometimes come awkwardly
in--"God and my right!" Seeing what is sometimes done under our noses, now
and then, I can hardly hold my countenance.

LION.--"God and my right!" What atrocity has that legend sanctified! and
yet with demure faces they try men for blasphemy. Give me the pot.

UNICORN.--Come, be cool--be philosophic. I tell you we shall have as much
need as ever of our stoicism?

LION.--What's the matter now?

UNICORN.--The matter! Why, the Tories are to be in