"Egad, sir, the county is going to the dogs! Our sentiments are not represented in parliament or out of it.

The 'County Mercury' has ratted, and be hanged to it! and now we have not one newspaper in the whole shire to express the sentiments of the respectable part of the community!" This speech was made on the occasion of one of the rare dinners given by Mr.and Mrs.Caxton to the grandees of the neighborhood, and uttered by no less a person than Squire Rollick, of Rollick Hall, chairman of the quarter-sessions.
I confess that I (for I was permitted on that first occasion not only to dine with the guests, but to outstay the ladies, in virtue of my growing years and my promise to abstain from the decanters),--I confess, I say, that I, poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden interest in the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to prick up his ears like a warhorse at the sound of the drum and rush so incontinently across the interval between Squire Rollick and himself.

But the mind of that deep and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a chit of my age.

You could not fish for the shy salmon in that pool with a crooked pin and a bobbin, as you would for minnows; or, to indulge in a more worthy illustration, you could not say of him, as Saint Gregory saith of the streams of Jordan, "A lamb could wade easily through that ford." "Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of--" here my uncle stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear; "What are his politics ?" "Don't know," answered I.Uncle Jack intuitively took down from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal intonation, "the rights of our distressed fellow-creatures!" My father scratched his eyebrow with his fore-finger, as he was apt to do when doubtful; the rest of the company--a silent set-looked up.
"Fellow-creatures!" said Mr.Rollick,--"fellow-fiddlesticks!" Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box.

He drew out of it cautiously,--"I mean," said he, "our respectable fellow-creatures;" and then suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr.Rollick said that the "'County Mercury' ought to be hanged," he was one of those politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on, intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all the "rubbish" (1) subsequently shot into Covent Garden and Hall of Commerce.
"Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants?
What is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the land ?" "Professes!" cried Squire Rollick,--"it is the prop of the land; and as for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the 'Mercury'-- " "Bought up the 'Mercury,' have they, the villains ?" cried Uncle Jack, interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent.