On Political Nicknames
To the Editor.
If your readers have not been much edified, they have been much amused, Mr. Editor, by the observations you have inserted about fasting; you have kept up the shuttlecock of controversy pretty well among ye. The result seems to be, that if a man has not got money enough in his pocket to buy a dinner, he will do well to fast for the good of the public. I cannot help thinking, however, that you have been a little too squeamish on the subject, for if we can beat the French by eating our dinner at supper time two or three times a year, or save the necessity of ten or twelve thousand troops by creating a few Sabbaths extraordinary, it would be a very cheap way of carrying on the war, and a man must have a great propensity to good eating who would object to it. No offence I hope Mr. Editor: these are hard times, and we ought to go to work as frugally as possible. But I sat down to write to you on a different subject; one that puzzles me daily; and I have therefore determined to seek for information from some of your more learned readers.
