“Well, sir, under these circumstances it is my duty to be plain: you and I can have no further acquaintance,” said the rector.
Snap appeared surprised, and with a vacant stare, or at least a well-feigned look of simplicity, he modestly inquired, “And why, may I ask, shoo-oo-ood you cut my acquaintance?”
“The reason is plain,” said the rector; “you are in possession of a property surreptitiously obtained. You have deeply injured the proprietor, ruined the auctioneer, and instead of feeling remorse, you glory in the nefarious deed.”
“Ho! ho! is that the way the land lies? Why, man, did not I purchase it at a public sale? and was I not the highest bidder? If the auction was ill managed on their parts, am I to blame?”
“These arguments,” replied the rector, “might satisfy a Jew, but have no force on the Christian mind. You have no moral right. It is true, the law of the land may protect you, yet still you retain that to which in justice you have not even a shadow of claim.”
“Well, I am rejoiced to hear these noble sentiments from you, Mr Rector, although your high tone smacks a little of prudery. I trust you will cherish them; and if you do, what the devil, I ask, will become of your tithes, to which you have less claim than I have to the property? I gave something for it, yoo-oo give nothing at all for them; and yet you have the confounded impudence to rebuke me for one solitary act of knavery, while you practise the same trick on hundreds yearly.”
The rector vouchsafed no reply, but retired to the ladies, disgusted with the hardened villany of his ribald parishioner, who laughed in triumph at the clergyman’s discomfiture; and turning to the priest, he said,
“Well, Master Glib-tongue, what do you think of the affair? Did not I badger Mr Modesty in prime style? I think he will not readily volunteer his infernal impudence again, after such a lesson.”
“I know, Snap,” said the priest, “you are a consummate scoundrel. You have treated a most amiable man with unfeeling rudeness, and you deserve the reprobation of every right-thinking mind. Your legal swindling is bad, but your unblushing advocacy of the principle is worse; and if any thing still more flagrant can be conceived, your base and savage retort upon your own pastor is the very climax of your heartless villany.”
“Ho! ho! Mr Bladderchops, you have taken up the cudgels, with a vengeance. But you should remember the proverb, ‘Come into court with clean hands.’ What are you better than Mr Modesty? You don’t take the tithes, simply because you can’t get them. You don’t rob by act of parliament, but you wheedle the money out of some, and frighten it out of others, with the magic of your priestcraft.”