Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/117

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
HEADLONG HALL.
109

Mr. Escot.

Possibly, when the inroads of luxury and disease shall have exterminated nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine of every million of the human race, the remaining fractional units may congregate into one point, and come to something like the same conclusion.

Mr. Jenkison.

I doubt it much. I conceive if only we three were survivors of the whole system of terrestrial being, we should never agree in our decisions as to the cause of the calamity.

Mr. Escot.

Be that as it may, I think you must at least assent to the following positions: that the many are sacrificed to the few; that ninety-nine in a hundred are occupied in a perpetual struggle for the preservation of a perilous and