to transmit this petition to government, with a memorial against the
tax-gatherer, who had been accused, in many instances, of oppressive and
corrupt conduct. He had hitherto defied all complainants, because he was
armed strong in law by an attorney who was his near relation--an attorney
of the name of Sharpe, whose cunning and skill in the doubles and mazes of
his profession, and whose active and vindictive temper had rendered him the
terror of the neighbourhood. Not only the poor but the rich feared him,
for he never failed to devise means of revenging himself wherever he was
offended. He one morning waited on Mr. Percy, to speak to him about the
memorial, which, he understood, Mr. Percy was drawing up against Mr. Bates,
the tax-gatherer.

"Perhaps, Mr. Percy," said he, "you don't know that Mr. Bates is my near
relation?"

Mr. Percy replied, that he had not known it; but that now that he did, he
could not perceive how that altered the business; as he interfered, not
from any private motive, but from a sense of public justice, which made him
desire to remove a person from a situation for which he had shown himself
utterly unfit.

Mr. Sharpe smiled a malicious smile, and declared that, for his part, he
did not pretend to be a reformer of abuses: he thought, in the present
times, that gentlemen who wished well to their king and the peace of the
country ought not to be forward to lend their names to popular discontents,
and should not embarrass government with petty complaints. Gentlemen could
never foresee where such things would end, and therefore, in the _existing
circumstances_, they ought surely to endeavour to strengthen, instead of
weakening, the hands of government.