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 CURRAN. 323 same effect; she chucked him under the chin, bat his jaw fell again on his breast: and, in short, the lively, facetious, and diverting Mr. Panch, became as dull, and dumb, as any of the right honourable puppets now in my eyethe secret was, that Mr. Punch was not in his proper place, or under the same management which procured her liking: and quite disappointed, she requested the squire to return him to his former quarters, with a handsome present to the manager, who soon restored Mr. Punch to all his former celebrity, and he became as great a favourite with the town as ever. 3 200 This speech, so appositely applied to the learned ser- jeant, excited continual bursts of laughter at his expense: but it had the still stronger effect of deciding him never more to risk a similar lecture from the same quarter; for, the next day, he resigned his serjeant's coif, and returned to his old post on the opposition bench. The following extracts from Mr. Curran's speech upon the pension bill, on the 13th of March, 1786, are admirable specimens of grave and sarcastic humour This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curiosities, the pension list, embraces every link in the human chain, every description of men, women, and children, from the exalted excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of the lady who ‘ humbleth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons it inculcates form its greatest perfection:-it teacheth, that sloth and vice may eat that bread, which virtue and honesty may starve for, after they had earned it. It teaches the idle and dissolute to look up for that support whicl they are too proud to stoop and earn. It directs the minds of men to an entire reliance on the ruling power of the state, who feed the ravens of the royal aviary, that cry continually for food. It teaches them to imitate those saints on the pension list, that are like the lilies of the field-they toil not, neither do they spin, aud yet are arrayed like Solomon in his glory. In fine, it teaches a lesson which indeed they might have learned from Epictetus that it is sometimes good not to