CONTENTS. MAXIMS ON THE POPULAR ART OF CHEATING, illustrated by Ten On the Morality taught by the Rich to the Poor ..... PAGE 489 ...... 503 504 505 ibid. ibid. 506 ibid. ibid. Answer to the Popular Cant that Goodness in a States INTRODUCTION. HAVING lately been travelling in Germany, I spent some time at that university in which Augustus Tomlinson presided as Professor of Moral Philosophy. I found that that great man died, after a lingering illness, in the beginning of the year 1822, perfectly resigned to his fate, and conversing, even on his death-bed, on the divine mysteries of Ethic Philosophy. Notwithstanding the little peccadilloes, to which I have alluded in the latter pages of Paul Clifford, and which his pupils deemed it advisable to hide from "The gaudy babbling and remorseless day," his memory was still held in a tender veneration. Perhaps, as in the case of the illustrious Burns, the faults of a great man endear to you his genius. In his latter days the PROFESSOR was accustomed to wear a light-green silk dressing-gown, and, as he was perfectly bald, a little black velvet cap; his small-clothes were pepper and salt. These interesting facts I learned from one of his pupils. His old age was consumed in lectures, in conversation, and in the composition of the little morceaux of wisdom we present to the public. In these essays and maxims, short as they are, he seems to have concentrated the wisdom of his industrious and honourable life. With great difficulty I procured from his executors the MSS. which were then preparing for the German press. A valuable consideration induced those gentlemen to become philanthropic, and to consider the inestimable blessings they would confer upon this country by suffering me to give the following essays to the light, in their native and English dress, on the same day they appear in Germany in the graces of foreign disguise. At an age when, while Hypocrisy stalks, simpers, sidles, struts, and hobbles through the country, Truth also begins to watch her adversary in every movement; and, solely to expose the various affectations she assumes, I cannot but think these lessons of Augustus Tomlinson peculiarly welltimed. I add them as a natural Appendix to a Novel that may not inappropriately be termed a Treatise on Social Frauds, and if they contain within them that evidence of diligent attention and that principle of good, in which the satire of Vice is only the germ of its detection, they may not, perchance, pass wholly unnoticed; nor be even condemned to that hasty reading in which the Indifference of to-day is but the prelude to the Forgetfulness of to-morrow. MAXIMS ON THE POPULAR ART OF CHEATING, ILLUSTRATED BY TEN CHARACTERS; Being an Introduction to that Noble Science, by which every Man may become his own Rogue. "Set a thief to catch a thief." Proverb. I. WHENEVER you are about to utter something astonishingly false, always begin with, "It is an acknowledged fact," &c. Sir Robert Filmer was a master of this method of writing. Thus with what a solemn face that great man attempted to cheat! "It is a truth undeniable that there cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, either great or small, &c.but that in the same multitude there is one man amongst them that in nature hath a right to be King of all the -as being the next heir to Adam!" rest II. When you want something from the public, throw the blame of the asking on the most sacred principle you can find. A common beggar can read you exquisite lessons on this the most important maxim in the art of popular cheating. "For the love of God, sir, a penny!" III. Whenever on any matter, moral, sentimental, or poli |