you shall hear no clamour or complaints: your senate shall, upon occasion, declare you the best of princes, the father of your country, the arbiter of Asia, the defender of the oppressed, and the delight of mankind. "Sir, hear not those who would, most falsely, impiously, and maliciously, insinuate that your government can be carried on without that wholesome necessary expedient, of sharing the public revenue with your faithful deserving senators. This, I know, my enemies are pleased to call bribery and corruption. Be it so: but I insist, that without this bribery and corruption, the wheels of government will not turn, or at least will be apt to take fire, like other wheels, unless they be greased at proper times. If an angel from heaven should descend to govern this empire upon any other scheme than what our enemies call corruption, he must return from whence he came, and leave the work undone. "Sir, it is well known we are a trading nation, and consequently cannot thrive in a bargain where nothing is to be gained. The poor electors, who run from their shops, or the plough, for the service of their country; are they not to be considered for their labour and their loyalty? The candidates, who, with the hazard of their persons, the loss of their characters, and the ruin of their fortunes, are preferred to the senate, in a country where they are strangers, before the very lords of the soil; are they not to be rewarded for their zeal to your majesty's service, and qualified to live in your metropolis as becomes the lustre of their stations? "Sir, if I have given great numbers of the most profitable employments among my own relations and nearest allies, it was not out of any partiali 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, I 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 of haranguing wherewith your representer begins, tinues, and ends his declamation, I shall leave to *Written by Dr Swift. way con 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 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) that 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 |