a moment's delay will proceed to put the
breadth of the British Channel between
Ruggles, Fuggles, and yourself.

Where are the "descendants (if any)
of Jean Baptiste Pierre Jouvin, who was
supposed to have been a French Huguenot
refugee in London, about the year
sixteen hundred and eighty?" Wherever can
the individual be, who seeks to find out
descendants from so remote a stock? Is he
Methusaleh, the wandering Jew, Isaac
Laquedem, or the laborious historian of
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
seeking to verify some document, to elicit
some fact, to authenticate some date? Or is
there perchance some Jouvin yet alive, a
Protestant and a Frenchman, anxious to learn
tidings of his old Huguenot ancestor—a rich
Jouvin, a pious Jouvin, a kindly Jouvin,
yearning to share his riches and his love with
some one bearing his name, and descended
from the race that suffered for the faith in the
bad days of old? Or does the advertisement
emanate—dreadful thought!—from some wily
Jesuit or fierce Inquisitor's great grandson
cherishing ancestral bigotry and ancestral
hatred—actuated by fanatical hostility
towards Huguenotism in general and Jouvin
in particular, and thirsting to decoy him into
some private Inquisition, there to torture
him on a private rack or burn him at a
private stake. Where are the descendants
(if any) of J. B. P. Jouvin? Have they
kept their father's name, and faith, and
trade, and do they yet ply the shuttle and
weave the rich silks in gloomy Spitalfields.
Miserable uncertainty! There may be
Jouvins yet, but they may have re-emigrated
—degenerated—their very name may have
become corrupted. One may be by this time
an Irishman say—Father O'Jowler, consigning
(in oratory) Protestants to torment and
on the little steps of his little altar fiercely
denouncing the British Government, the
Saxon race, and the theory of the earth's
movement. One Jouvin may have emigrated
to America, and in process of time transmuted
himself into Colonel Gracchus Juvvins, that
fierce pro-slavery Senator and (prior to his
bankruptcy and "absquatulation" from the
state of New York) ardent Free Soiler. There
may be descendants of Jouvin in England,
debased, degenerated into Joggins, and, all
unconscious that their ancestors were silk-
weavers in Spitalfields, be keeping coal and
potatoe sheds in Whitechapel.

Where on earth are the people who
send conscience-money to the Chancellor of
the Exchequer? Absence of income and
conscience (at least towards such a vague
mentor as the government financier) would
of course prevent my ever sending him
halves of notes for unpaid income tax. Did
you ever know any one who did? Can you
point out to me one single gentleman with a
white waistcoat, a broad-brimmed hat and a
watch and seals, and say—"There goes T. J.,
or L. B., who sent the Chancellor of the
Exchequer fifty pounds yesterday on account
of taxes unpaid." Yet these conscientious men
must be somewhere or other. What are they
like? I have a fanciful theory—founded on
what basis I am, I confess, quite at a loss to
tell—that the majority of these men of
conscience are men with white waistcoats,
broad-brimmed hats, watches and seals;
furthermore, that they all wear low shoes,
and take snuff from massive golden boxes.
They are all immensely rich, of course; and
the conscience-dockets in their cheque-books
are mingled with numerous others relating to
donations to charitable institutions, police-
court poor-boxes, and cases of real distress. I
can fancy the entries in their diaries running
somewhat thus: "Attended board-meeting of
orphan sympathisers at twelve; relieved the
destitute at half-past twelve; gave away
soup-tickets at one; flannels and coals at two;
drew check for fifty pounds and enclosed it to
the Chancellor of the Exchequer as conscience
money at three." I wonder how long after
they have defrauded the revenue to any
considerable extent their conscience begins to
prick them, and how long they battle with
conscience, and hocus him, and smother him,
and refuse to listen to his still small voice. I
wonder when it is they are at last persuaded
to make restitution, and how they do it—
whether with the ineffable felicity of well-
doing, or with the uneasy satisfaction of
atoning by a partial disgorgement for a
grievous roguery, or with the tremour of
detection, or the sullenness of self-reproach, or
the horror of despair. Are the conscience-
money senders, after all, not the white
waistcoated, low-shoed men I have figured to
myself, but hard, stern, gaunt, grisly lawyers,
bill discounters, bailiffs to great landlords,
speculators, guardians, committee men,
trustees, and the like? Are they suddenly
overtaken with such a sharp and quick
remorse for the injuries they have inflicted on
those over whom they have power, or who
have trusted in them, for the widows they
have been hard upon, and the orphans whose
noses they have ground, that in sheer tremour
and agony of mind they with their trembling
hands adjust the salves of gold and plasters
of banknotes to the hidden sores of their
hearts, and in a desperate hurry send tens
and twenties and fifties all over the country;
this to the widows' almshouse and this to
the orphans' asylum; this to the water-
company for unpaid water-rate; this to the
gas-company for the falsified meter; this to
the railway-company for having travelled in
first-class carriages with second-class tickets,
or exceeded the allowed quantity of luggage,
or smoked in defiance of the by-laws; this
to the Exchequer in part compensation of the
abused commissioners and defrauded collectors
of income tax? Whether I am at all
right or all wrong in these surmisings, I
imagine the payments of conscience-money