They demanded more copies, and then employed more go-betweens to charge ten times the value of a copy, and nailed the balance, no doubt.

'Stand and deliver thirty pounds for this stamp.' 'Stand and deliver to me that call myself the Chancellor's purse-bearer--and there's no such creature--two guineas.' 'Stand and deliver seven, thirteen, to the clerk of the Hanaper'-- and there's no such thing as a Hanaper.

'Stand and deliver three, five,' to a go-between that calls himself the Lord Chancellor again, and isn't.
'Stand and deliver six, naught, to a go-between that acts for the deputy, that ought to put a bit of sealing-wax on the patent, but hasn't the brains to do it himself, so you must pay ME a fancy price for doing it, and then I won't do it; it will be done by a clerk at twenty-five shillings a week.' And, all this time, mind you, no disposition to soften all this official peculation by civility; no misgiving that the next wave of civilization may sweep nil these go-betweens and leeches out of the path of progress; no, the deputy-vice-go-betweens all scowled, as well as swindled: they broke my heart so, often I sat down in their antechambers and the scalding tears ran down my cheeks, at being pillaged of my time as well as my money, and treated like a criminal--for what?
For being, in my small way, a national benefactor." "Ay," said the doctor, "you had committed the crime of brains; and the worse crime of declining to be starved in return for them.

I don't rebel against the fees so much: their only fault is that they are too heavy, since the monopoly they profess to secure is short-lived, and yet not very secure; the Lord Chancellor, as a judge, has often to upset the patent which he has sold in another character.

But that system of go-betweens, and deputy-go-betweens, and deputy-lieutenant-go-betweens and nobody doing his own business in matters of State, it really is a national curse, and a great blot upon the national intellect.