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Head, are to be sold places and pensions: beware of counterfeits, and take care of mistaking the door."

For my own part, I think it very unnecessary to give the character of a great minister in the fulness of his power, because it is a thing that naturally does itself, and is obvious to the eyes of all mankind; for his personal qualities are all derived into the most minute parts of his administration. If this be just, prudent, regular, impartial, intent upon the public good, prepared for present exigencies, and provident of the future; such is the director himself, in his private capacity: if it be rapacious, insolent, partial, palliating long and deep diseases of the public with empirical remedies, false, disguised, impudent, malicious, revengeful; you shall infallibly find the private life of the conductor to answer in every point: nay, what is more, every twinge of the gout or gravel will be felt in their consequences by the community; as the thief-catcher, upon viewing a house broke open, could immediately distinguish, from the manner of the workmanship, by what hand it was done.

It is hard to form a maxim against which an exception is not ready to start up; so, in the present case, where the minister grows enormously rich, the public is proportionably poor; as, in a private family, the steward always thrives the fattest, when his lord is running out.

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UPON the death of King George I. it was generally supposed that his favourite minister, Sir Robert Walpole, would have fallen into utter disgrace. George II., while heir-apparent, had shewed some countenance to the Tories, and to other opponents of Walpole. Queen Caroline was believed to be the minister's personal enemy; and all things appeared to predict his downfall, and the elevation of Sir Spencer Compton to the office of premier. The Tory writers, who, during the apparency of George II., had been well received at Leicester House, anticipated a triumph over the favourite of the deceased monarch, and, in many a jeu d'esprit, expressed their confidence of the course which the successor was to pursue.

But, by one of those cabinet intrigues, of which the real cause has never been ascertained, because, perhaps, it was too trifling to bear the public eye, Walpole maintained, under George II., even more than the power he had enjoyed from the favour of his predecessor. To these events the following piece has emblematical reference. It was probably left imperfect, when the crisis to which the Tories so anxiously looked forward terminated so undesirably, in the confirmation of Walpole's power.

REGOGE* was the thirty-fourth emperor of Japan, and began his reign in the year 341 of the Christian era, succeeding to Nena,t a princess who governed with great felicity.

There had been a revolution in that empire about twenty-six years before, which made some breaches in the hereditary line; and Regoge, successor to Nena, although of the royal family, was a distant relation.

There were two violent parties in the empire, which began in the time of the revolution above mentioned, and at the death of the Empress Nena were in the highest degree of animosity, each charging the other with a design of introducing new gods, and changing the civil constitution. names of these two parties were Husiges and Yortes. The latter were those whom Nena, the late empress, most favoured toward the end of her reign, and by whose advice she governed.

The

The Husige faction, enraged at their loss of power, made private applications to Regoge, during the life of the empress; which prevailed so far, that, upon her death, the new emperor wholly disgraced the Yortes, and employed only the Husiges in all his affairs. The Japanese author highly blames his imperial majesty's proceeding in this affair; because it was allowed on all hands, that he had then a happy opportunity of reconciling parties for ever, by a moderating scheme. But he, on the contrary, began his reign by openly disgracing the principal and most popular Yortes, some of which had been chiefly instrumental in raising him to the throne. By this mistaken step, he occasioned a rebellion, which, although it were soon quelled, by some very sur

* King George. † Queen Anne.

Whigs and Tories.

prising turns of fortune, yet the fear, whether real or pretended, of new attempts, engaged him in such immense charges, that, instead of clearing any part of that prodigious debt left on his kingdom by the former war, which might have been done, by any tolerable management, in twelve years of the most profound peace, he left his empire loaded with a vast addition to the old encumbrance.

This prince, before he succeeded to the empire of Japan, was king of Tedsu,* a dominion seated on the continent, to the west side of Japan. Tedsu was the place of his birth, and more beloved by him. than his new empire; for there he spent some months almost every year, and thither was supposed to have conveyed great sums of money, saved out of his imperial revenues.

There were two maritime towns of great importance bordering upon Tedsu:† of these, he purchased a litigated title, and, to support it, was forced not only to retrench deeply on his Japanese revenues, but to engage in alliances very dangerous to the Japanese empire.†

Japan was at that time a limited monarchy, which some authors are of opinion, was introduced there by a detachment from the numerous army of Brennus, who ravaged a great part of Asia; and those of them who fixed in Japan, left behind them that kind of military institution which the northern people, in ensuing ages, carried through most parts of Europe; the generals becoming kings, the great officers a senate of nobles, with a representative from every centenary of private soldiers; and, in the

* Hanover.

† Bremen and Lubec.

The quadruple alliance, usually accounted the most impolitic step in the reign of George I., had its rise in his anxiety for his continental dominions.

assent of the majority in these two bodies, confirmed by the general, the legislature consisted.

I need not farther explain a matter so universally known; but return to my subject.

The Husige faction, by a gross piece of negligence in the Yortes, had so far insinuated themselves and their opinions into the favour of Regoge, before he came to the empire, that this prince firmly believed them to be his only true friends, and the others his mortal enemies.* By this opinion, he governed all the actions of his reign.

The emperor died suddenly, in his journey to Tedsu, where, according to his usual custom, he was going to pass the summer.

This prince, during his whole reign, continued an absolute stranger to the language, the manners, the laws, and the religion of Japan; and passing his whole time among old mistresses, or a few privadoes, left the whole management of the empire in the hands of a minister, upon the condition of being made easy in his personal revenues, and the management of parties in the senate. His last minister,† who governed in the most arbitrary manner for several years, he was thought to hate more than he did any other person in Japan, except his only son, the heir to the empire. The dislike he bore to the former was, because the minister, under pretence that he could not govern the senate without disposing of employments among them, would not suffer his master to oblige one single person, but disposed of all to his own relations and dependents. But as to that continued and virulent hatred he bore to the prince his son, from the beginning of his reign

* Through all the reign of George I., the Whigs were in triumphant possession of the government.

† Sir Robert Walpole.

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