and Squire, that is a vampire! But no violence! Don't smash their
machines, don't burn their ricks! Moral force, and a curse on all
tyrants!' Well, and if poor Hodge thinks moral force is all my eye, and
that the recommendation is to be read backwards, in the devil's way of
reading the Lord's prayer, I should like to know which of the two ought
to go to Botany Bay,--Hodge, who comes out like a man, if he thinks he is
wronged, or t' other sneaking chap, who makes use of his knowledge to
keep himself out of the scrape?"

PARSON.--"It may be very true; but when I saw that poor fellow at the
bar, with his intelligent face, and heard his bold clear defence, and
thought of all his hard struggles for knowledge, and how they had ended,
because he forgot that knowledge is like fire, and must not be thrown
amongst flax,--why, I could have given my right hand to save him. And,
oh, Squire, do you remember his poor mother's shriek of despair when he
was sentenced to transportation for life--I hear it now! And what,
Leonard--what do you think had misled him? At the bottom of all the
mischief was a tinker's bag. You cannot forget Sprott?"

LEONARD.--"Tinker's bag! Sprott!"

SQUIRE.---"That rascal, sir, was the hardest follow to nab you could
possibly conceive; as full of quips and quirks as an Old Bailey lawyer.
But we managed to bring it home to him. Lord! his bag was choke-full of
tracts against every man who had a good coat on his back; and as if that
was not enough, cheek by jowl with the tracts were lucifers, contrived on
a new principle, for teaching my ricks the theory of spontaneous
combustion. The labourers bought the lucifers--"

PARSON.--"And the poor village genius bought the tracts."