Put in Val, or you will never warm your posteriors in a seat for this county, so long as I carry the key of it.
In doing so, make no wry faces about it--you will only serve yourself and your property, and serve Val into the bargain.

Val, to be sure, is as confounded a scoundrel as any of us, but then he is a staunch Protestant; and you ought not to be told at this time of day, that the greater the scoundrel the better the agent.

Would you have a fellow, for instance, whose conscience, indeed, must stand between you and your interest?
Would you have some honest blockhead, who, when you are to be served by a piece of friendly rascality, will plead scruples.

If so, you are a greater fool than I ever took you to be.

Make Val your agent, and it is not you that will suffer by him, but the people--whom, of course, no one cares a curse about.