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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-David Copperfield by Charles Dickens


little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it
was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all
needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue
of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the
holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not), - while the public
was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every
afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite
monstrous. That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the
diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such
a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a
corner of St. Paul's Churchyard, which few people knew, it must
have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.

Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and
then argued this question with me as he had argued the other. He
said, what was it after all? It was a question of feeling. If the
public felt that their wills were in safe keeping, and took it for
granted that the office was not to be made better, who was the
worse for it? Nobody. Who was the better for it? All the
Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good predominated. It might not
be a perfect system; nothing was perfect; but what he objected to,
was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the Prerogative Office, the
country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative
Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He considered
it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them;
and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time. I
deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself.

I find he was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the
present moment, but has done so in the teeth of a great
parliamentary report made (not too willingly) eighteen years ago,
when all these objections of mine were set forth in detail, and
when the existing stowage for wills was described as equal to the
accumulation of only two years and a half more. What they have
done with them since; whether they have lost many, or whether they
sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don't know. I am
glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet awhile.

I have set all this down, in my present blissful chapter, because
here it comes into its natural place. Mr. Spenlow and I falling
into this conversation, prolonged it and our saunter to and fro,
until we diverged into general topics. And so it came about, in
the end, that Mr. Spenlow told me this day week was Dora's
birthday, and he would be glad if I would come down and join a
little picnic on the occasion. I went out of my senses
immediately; became a mere driveller next day, on receipt of a
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PinkMonkey.com Digital Library - PinkMonkey.com-David Copperfield by Charles Dickens



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