Your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles

Wit can have a long half life. An exchange between Lord Sandwich and Samuel Foote in the late 1700s. Quoted by Percival Stockdale in The Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Percival Stockdale, 1809.

"Foote," (said lord Sandwich) "I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end; but I think, that you must either die of the pox, or the halter."
"My lord," (replied Foote instantaneously) "that will depend upon one of two contingencies; — whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles."