Wealth! what is wealth to me, my country, compared to thy happiness? Station! what is station, unless thou, too, art advanced? Power! what is power, unless the power of doing thee good? Oh, my country! My country, oh!--(Oh! oh! oh! from various parts of the house.) The patriot sits down, wiping his patriotic forehead with a white handkerchief, amidst thunders of applause.
Before going farther with our Illustrations--indeed we don’t know whether we shall go any farther with them at all or not, as we rather think we have given quite enough of them--before going farther, then, with any thing in the more direct course of our subject, we may pause a moment to remark how carefully every one who comes before the public to claim its patronage, conceals the real object of his doing so. How remote he keeps from this very delicate point! He never whispers its name--never breathes it. How cautiously he avoids all allusion to his own particular interest in the matter! From the unction with which he speaks of the excellences of the thing he has to dispose of, be it what it may, a Dutch cheese or a treatise on philosophy, the enthusiasm with which he dwells on them, you would imagine that he spoke out of a pure feeling of admiration of these excellences. You would never dream--for this he carefully conceals from you--that his sole object is to get hold of as much of your cash as he can; the Dutch cheese or the treatise on philosophy being a mere instrument to accomplish the desired transfer.
It is rather a curious feature this in the social character: every thing offered for sale is so offered through a pure spirit of benevolence, either for the public good or individual benefit; nothing for the sake of mere filthy lucre, or the particular interest of the seller--not at all. He, good soul, has no such motive--not he, indeed.
We said a little while since that we doubted whether we would give any farther illustrations of the great science of humbug. We have now made up our minds that we shall not. Although we could easily give fifty more, it is unnecessary.
We confess, however, to be under strong temptations to give “the candidate’s humbug”--to exhibit that gentleman _doing_ over the constituency, making them, whether he be whig or tory, swallow the grossest fudge that ever was thrust down an unsuspecting gullet; but we refrain. We refrain also, in the meantime, from giving what we would call “the liberty and equality humbug;” together with several other humbugs equally instructive and edifying.