Finally, one-third of all the Chancery Lunatics
do every six years exchange the living tombs
they are fleeced and bullied in for dead tombs,
where they rest; and go from the sham
protection of the Lord Chancellor of England to the
real protection of their Creator and their judge.
These statistics have been long before the
world, and are dead figures to the Skimmer of
things, but tell a dark tale to the Reader of
things: so dark, that I pray Heaven to protect
me, and all other weak inoffensive persons, from
the protection of my Lord Chancellor in this
kind.

Beverley was so unfortunate as to exist before
the date of the above petition; and suffered the
consequences.

He was an aristocrat by birth, noble on both
sides of his house, and unluckily had money.
But for that he would have been a labouring
man, and free. My Lord Protector committed
him with six hundred pounds a year maintenance
money to the care of his committee, the Honourable
Fynes Beverley.

Now this corporate, yet honourable, individual,
to whom something was committed, and so
Chancery-lane called him in its own sweet French the
thing committed, was a gentleman of birth, breeding,
and intelligence. He undertook to take care
of his simple cousin: and what he did take care
of was himself.

THE SUB-LETTING SWINDLE.

1. The Honourable Fynes Beverley, Anglo-French
committee, or crown tenant, sub-let soft
Francis for £300 a year, pocketed £300, and
washed his hands of Frank.

2. Mr. Heselden, the sub-tenant, sub-let the
Softy of high degree for £150, pocketed the
surplus, and washed his hands of him.

3. The £150 man sub-let him to Dr. Wolf at
£60 a year, pouched the surplus, and washed his
hands of him.

And now what on earth was left for poor Dr.
Wolf to do? Could he sub-embezzle a Highlander's
breeks? Could he subtract more than her skin
from off the singed cat? Could he peel the core
of a rotten apple? Could he pare a grated cheese
rind? Could he flay a skinned flint? Could he
fleece a hog just after Satan had shaved it as clean
as a bantam's egg?

Let no man dare to limit genius; least of all
the genius of extortion.

Dr. Wolf screwed comparatively more out of
young Frank than did any of the preceding
screws. He turned him into a servant of all
work and half starved him: money profit, £45
out of the £60, or three-fourths, whereas the
others had only bagged one-half. But by this
means he got a good servant without wages, and
on half a servant's food, clearing £22 and £12 in
these two items.

Victim of our great national vice and foible
Vicariousness, this scion of a noble house,
protected in theory by the Crown, vicariously
sub-protected by the Chancellor, sub-vicariously
sub-sham-protected by his kin, was really flung
unprotected into the fleece market, and might be
seen—at the end of the long chain of subs, pros,
vices, locos, shams, shuffles, swindles, and lies—
shaking the carpets, making the beds, carrying
the water, sweeping the rooms, and scouring the
sordid vessels, of thirty patients in Drayton
House, not one of whom was his equal either in
birth or wealth; and of four menials, who were
all his masters and hard ones. His work was
always doing, never done. He was not the least
mad nor bad, but merely of feeble intellect all
round. Fifty thousand gentlemen's families would
have been glad of him at £300 a year, and made a
son and a brother of him. But he was under
the protection of the Lord Chancellor. Thin,
half-starved, threadbare, out at elbows, the
universal butt, scoffed at by the very lunatics, and
especially ill treated by the attendants whose
work he did gratis, he was sworn at, jeered,
insulted, cuffed, and even kicked, every day of his
hard, hard life. And yet he was a gentleman,
though a soft one; his hands, his features, his
carriage, his address, had all an indefinable stamp
of race. How had it outlived such crushing,
degrading usage? I don't know, Charles; how
does a daisy survive the iron roller? Alfred
soon found him out, and, to everybody's amazement,
especially Frank's, remonstrated gently
but resolutely and eloquently, and soon convinced
the majority, sane and insane, that a creature so
meek and useful merited especial kindness, not
cruelty. One keeper, The Robin, alias Tom
Wales, an ex-prizefighter, was a warm convert
to this view. Among the maniacs only one held
out, and said contemptuously he couldn't see it.

"Well," said Alfred, "lay a finger on him
after this, and I'll lay a hand on you, and aid
your intellectual vision."

Rooke and Hayes treated remonstrance with
open and galling contempt. Yet the tide of opinion
changed so, they did not care to defy it openly:
but they bullied poor Beverley now and then on
the sly, and he never told. He was too
inoffensive for this world. But one day, as Alfred
was sitting with his door ajar, writing a letter of
earnest expostulation to the Commissioners,
who had left his first unanswered, he heard
Hayes at the head of the stairs call roughly
"Frank! Frank!"

"Sir," replied the soft little voice of young Beverley.

"Come, be quick young shaver."

"I'm coming sir," and up ran Beverley.

"Here take this tray down stairs."

"Yes, sir."

"Stop, there's a bit of bread for you." And
Hayes chucked him a crust, as one throws it to
another man's dog.

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Beverley, stooping
down for it, and being habitually as hungry as
a ratcatcher's tyke, took an eager bite in that
position.

"How dare you eat it there," said Hayes
brutally: " take it to your own crib: come,