But the squire, though a
little clownish, had some home-bred sense. "What! have I come, at all
this expense and trouble, all the way to Constantinople only to be
kicked? Without going beyond my own stable, my groom, for half a crown,
would have kicked me to my heart's content. I don't mean to stay in
Constantinople eight-and-forty hours, nor ever to return to this rough,
good-natured people, that have their own customs."
In my opinion the squire was in the right. He was satisfied with his
first ramble and his first injuries. But reason of state and common
sense are two things. If it were not for this difference, it might not
appear of absolute necessity, after having received a certain quantity
of buffetings by advance, that we should send a peer of the realm to the
scum of the earth to collect the debt to the last farthing, and to
receive, with infinite aggravation, the same scorns which had been paid
to our supplication through a commoner: but it was proper, I suppose,
that the whole of our country, in all its orders, should have a share of
the indignity, and, as in reason, that the higher orders should touch
the larger proportion.
This business was not ended because our dignity was wounded, or because
our patience was worn out with contumely and scorn. We had not disgorged
one particle of the nauseous doses with which we were so liberally
crammed by the mountebanks of Paris in order to drug and diet us into
perfect tameness.
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