firmly have interrogated Mr. Pickwick with regard to his conduct after the cricket match at Muggleton; how he would have asked him whether he was prepared to admit, or whether he was prepared to deny, that he was drunk upon that occasion?  Could you not imagine how my honourable and learned friend, passing on from that topic, would have alluded to what I think he would have termed the disgraceful incident when, on the 1st of September, Mr. Pickwick was found in a wheelbarrow on the ground of Captain Boldwig,

and was removed to the public pound, from which he was only extricated by the violence of his friends and servant?  Passing on from that topic, would not my honourable and learned friend have reminded him of how he had been bound over at Ipswich before Mr. Nupkins, together with his friend Mr. Tupman, and called upon to find bail for good behaviour for six months?  Then in conclusion how my friend would have turned to that incident in the double-bedded room at Ipswich, at the Great White Horse, and how my learned friend, with that skill which he possesses, would, bit by bit, by slow degrees, have extricated from that miserable man the confession that he had been found in that double-bedded room, a spinster lady being there at the same time.  Ladies and gentlemen, what would have been

left of Mr. Pickwick after that process had been gone through?  His only relief would have been to write to the Times newspaper, and to complain of cross-examination.