ty, but because I know them best, and can best depend upon them. I have been at the pains to mould and cultivate their opinions. Abler heads might probably have been found, but they would not be equally under my direction. A huntsman who has the absolute command of his dogs, will hunt more effectually than with a better pack, to whose manner and cry he is a stranger.

"Sir, upon the whole, I will appeal to all those who best knew your royal father, whether that blessed monarch had ever one anxious thought for the public, or disappointment, or uneasiness, or want of money for all his occasions, during the time of my administration? And how happy the people confessed themselves to be, under such a king, I leave to their own numerous addresses, which all politicians will allow to be the most infallible proof how any nation stands affected to their sovereign."

Lelop-Aw, having ended his speech, and struck his forehead thrice against the table, as the custom is in Japan, sat down with great complacency of mind, and much applause of his adherents, as might be observed by their countenances and their whispers. But the emperor's behaviour was remarkable; for, during the whole harangue, he appeared equally attentive and uneasy. After a short pause, his majesty commanded that some other counsellor should deliver his thoughts, either to confirm or object against what had been spoken by Lelop-Aw.

A PAMPHLET was lately sent me, entitled, "A Letter from the Right Honourable Sir R. W. to the Right Honourable W. P. Esq., occasioned by the late Invectives on the King, her Majesty, and all the Royal Family." By these initial letters of our names, the world is to understand that you and I must be meant. Although the letter seems to require an answer, yet because it appears to be written rather in the style and manner used by some of your pensioners, than your own, shall allow you the liberty to think the same of this answer, and leave the public to determine which of the two actors can better personate their principals. That frigid and fustian way of haranguing wherewith your representer begins, continues, and ends his declamation, I shall leave to

*Written by Dr Swift.

I

the critics in eloquence and propriety to descant on; because it adds nothing to the weight of your accusations, nor will my defence be one grain the better by exposing its puerilities.

I shall therefore only remark, upon this particular, that the frauds and corruptions in most other arts and sciences, as law, physic, (I shall proceed no farther,) are usually much more plausibly defended, than in that of politics; whether it be, that, by a kind of fatality, the vindication of a corrupt minister is always left to the management of the meanest and most prostitute writers; or whether it be, that the effects of a wicked or unskilful administration are more public, visible, pernicious, and universal: whereas the mistakes in other sciences are often matters that affect only speculation; or at worst, the bad consequences fall upon few and private persons. A nation is quickly sensible of the miseries it feels, and little comforted by knowing what account it turns to by the wealth, the power, the honours conferred on those who sit at the helm, or the salaries paid to their penmen, while the body of the people is sunk into poverty and despair. A Frenchman, in his wooden shoes, may, from the vanity of his nation, and the constitution of that government, conceive some imaginary pleasure in boasting the grandeur of his monarch, in the midst of his own slavery; but a freeborn Englishman, with all his loyalty, can find little satisfaction at a minister overgrown in wealth and power, from the lowest degree of want and contempt; when that power or wealth are drawn from the bowels and blood of the nation, for which every fellowsubject is a sufferer, except the great man himself, his family, and his pensioners: I mean such a minister (if there has ever been such a one)

whose whole management has been a continued link of ignorance, blunders, and mistakes in every article, beside that of enriching and aggrandizing himself.

For these reasons, the faults of men who are most trusted in public business are, of all others, the most difficult to be defended. A man may be persuaded into a wrong opinion, wherein he has small concern; but no oratory can have the power over a sober man, against the conviction of his own senses; and therefore, as I take it, the money thrown away on such advocates might be more prudently spared, and kept in such a minister's own pocket, than lavished in hiring a corporation of pamphleteers to defend his conduct, and prove a kingdom to be flourishing in trade and wealth, which every particular subject (except those few already excepted) can lawfully swear, and, by dear experience, knows, to be a falsehood.

Give me leave, noble sir, in the way of argument, to suppose this to be your case; could you in good conscience, or moral justice, chide your paper-advocates for their ill success in persuading the world against manifest demonstration? Their miscarriage is owing, alas! to want of matter. Should we allow them to be masters of wit, raillery, or learning, yet the subject would not admit them to exercise their talents; and, consequently, they can have no recourse but to impudence, lying, and scurrility.

I must confess, that the author of your letter to me has carried this last qualification to a greater height than any of his fellows; but he has, in my opinion, failed a little, in point of politeness, from the original, which he affects to imitate. If I should say to a prime minister, "Sir, you have

"sufficiently provided, that Dunkirk should be absolutely demolished and never repaired; you "took the best advantages of a long and general peace to discharge the immense debts of the nation; you did wonders with the fleet; you "made the Spaniards submit to our quiet posses"sion of Gibraltar and Portmahon; you never "enriched yourself and family at the expence of "the public."-Such is the style of your supposed letter; which, however, if I am well informed, by no means comes up to the refinements of a fishwife at Billingsgate, "You never had a bas"tard by Tom the waterman; you never stole a "silver tankard; you were never whipped at the "cart's tail."

In the title of your letter, it is said to be "oc"casioned by the late invectives on the king, her "majesty, and all the royal family:" and the whole contents of the paper (stripped from your eloquence) goes on upon a supposition affectedly serious, that their majesties, and the whole royal family, have been lately bitterly and publicly inveighed against, in the most enormous and treasonable manner. Now, being a man, as you well know, altogether out of business, I do sometimes lose an hour in reading a few of those controversial papers upon politics, which have succeeded for some years past to the polemical tracts between whig and tory: and in this kind of reading, (if it may deserve to be so called) although I have been often but little edified, or entertained, yet has it given me occasion to make some observations. First, I have observed, that, however men may sincerely agree in all the branches of the low church principle, in a tenderness for dissenters of every kind, in a perfect abhorrence of popery and the pretender, and in the most firm

VOL. X.