"I beg your pardon," I interposed. "I consider there is a very great difference indeed."
"Ah! but Jack at large doesn't think so; and so I have no hesitation in telling you my name is Tooks. When I came to years of discretion, which I managed to do pretty early, I felt thankful it was not Snooks, and looked out of the window of my private existence, as it were, to see what was going on on the High Street of life. From my earliest days I devoted myself to the study of Jack--that is short for 'John Bull,' and prose for 'my country.' I took a personal interest in all his concerns. He was no abstraction like Athens or Rome, but a real breathing personage, with great peculiarities of character, and the most extraordinary position the world had ever seen. I studied the Army List, the Navy List, the Shipping Gazette, and felt that Jack was the most astonishing potentate on the face of the earth. I studied the Parliamentary debates--the reports of public meetings--the list of railway directors and committee men--and I was forced to confess that Jack was little better than an ass. At sixteen I was secretary to the agglomerated association for vindicating the rights of man. The rights of property, however, were left to take care of themselves, and our chairman was transported for theft. I lost a silver watch, the bequest of my grandmother, in an unaccountable manner--an upper coat, and a gold pencil-case; so, in case of being stript of everything, I resigned my secretaryship, and had to pay half-a-year's rent of the cellar in which our meetings were held. But Jack, after all, is a noble fellow; and there are thieves and impostors in all parties. At seventeen I was an eloquent speaker among the 'Constitutional Brothers.' We were all great admirers of Jack, and would have died for the glorious constitution, the envy of surrounding nations, and the glory of our own; but we differed from the rest of the world on the date at which this constitution had been in its purest and best condition. We fixed on the reign of Harold, and were most hostile to the Norman invaders. Whatever had been introduced since then we considered a badge of conquest and subjection. We called the Parliament the Wittenagemote, and hated the feudal system. Our innovations were all in a backward sense. We wished to undo the Battle of Hastings, and find out a lineal descendant of King Harold. It was reported that one did exist in the person of a shoemaker at Northampton. We went to see him, and found him one of the constables in the town, who threatened to take us into custody if we tried on any more of our nonsense. Low fellows have no ambition, though they were grandsons of Julius Cæsar. We talked very high of what we should do in this appalling absence of a legitimate possessor of the throne; and just when we had nearly resolved to proceed to use the ancient privilege of the English people and elect a king, an uncle of mine, a merchant in Swithin's Alley, interfered with my royal candidature, and I became a clerk in his counting-house, at a hundred a-year."