I demand the
remainder."
"Would you leave me in a strange country penniless?" exclaimed the
culprit, in a tone of reproach.
"Strange country! penniless!" repeated Mr. Green, looking over his
spectacles, first at Mr. Truck, and then at Mr. Sandon. "That to which you
have no claim must be restored, though it strip you to the skin. Every
pound you have belongs to the public, and to no one else."
"Your pardon, Mr. Green, and green enough you are, if you lay down that
doctrine," interrupted Captain Truck, "in which neither Vattel, nor the
revised statutes will bear you out. A passenger cannot remove his effects
from a ship, until his passage be first paid."
"That, sir, I dispute, in a question affecting the king's revenues. The
claims of government precede all others, and the money that has once
belonged to the crown, and which has not been regularly paid away by the
crown, is the crown's still."
"Crowns and coronations! Perhaps, Master Green, you think you are in
Somerset House at this present speaking?"
Now Mr. Green was so completely a star of a confined orbit, that his ideas
seldom described a tangent to their ordinary revolutions. He was so much
accustomed to hear of England ruling colonies, the East and the West,
Canada, the Cape, and New South Wales, that it was not an easy matter for
him to conceive himself to be without the influence of the British laws.
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