Page:Crotchet Castle - Peacock (1831).djvu/115

 Next, you must all learn political economy, which I will teach you, very compendiously, in lectures over the bottle.

I hate lectures over the bottle. But pray, sir, what is political economy?

Political economy is to the state what domestic economy is to the family.

No such thing, sir. In the family there is a paterfamilias, who regulates the distribution, and takes care that there shall be no such thing in the household as one dying of hunger, while another dies of surfeit. In the state it is all hunger at one end, and all surfeit at the other. Matchless Claret, Mr. Crotchet.