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I said before: the frugal life is his,Which in a saint or cynic ever wasThe theme of praise: a hermit would not missCanonization for the self-same course,And wherefore blame gaunt Wealth’s austerities? (12.7.49-54).This questioning initially appears to be rhetorical questioning (erotesis), but the textitself works through to rather a different response: “Perhaps he fain would liberatemankind /Even with the very ore which makes them base” (12.10.77-8). Bydescribing money as that “which makes them base”, the rhetor not only underminesthe value of the miser’s schemes for liberation, but reiterates the corrupting influenceof wealth. The apparent erotesis is actually sermocination. Nonetheless, the rhetorhas not been muzzled by this moralism, and promises to be as revealing as ever:But now I’m going to be immoral; nowI mean to show things really as they are,Not as they ought to be: for I avow,That till we see what’s what in fact, we’re farFrom much improvement (12.40.313-17).This is ‘immorality’ with a moral end, much like coarseness for an ethical purpose.Again, the expressed intention is, from a conservative moral standpoint, essentiallyunimpeachable, since it reiterates the values of honesty and social amelioration. TheLiterary Examiner validates such tactics as the “exposure of latent vice”. 176The commentary on hypocrisy and cant also includes a commentary on tolerance, andthe limits thereof, which reiterates the moral purpose of the poem via the balancing ofone statement by a qualifying contrary (dirimens copulatio):I was bred a moderate Presbyterian.176 Literary Examiner, July 5, 1823, 6-12; July 12, 1823, 23-7, in RR, III, 1358-64: p.8 (1359).102