ht he saved. The author ought also to recollect, that a
good man would hardly deny, even to the worst of ministers, the means of
doing their duty; especially in a crisis when our being depended on
supplying them with some means or other. In such a case their penury of
mind, in discovering resources, would make it rather the more necessary,
not to strip such poor providers of the little stock they had in hand.

Besides, here is another subject of distress, and a very serious one,
which puts us again to a stand. The author may possibly not come into
power (I only state the possibility): he may not always continue in it:
and if the contrary to all this should fortunately for us happen, what
insurance on his life can be made for a sum adequate to his loss? Then
we are thus unluckily situated, that the _chance_ of an American and
Irish revenue of 300,000_l._ to be managed by him, is to save us from
ruin two or three years hence at best, to make us happy at home and
glorious abroad; and the actual possession of 400,000_l._ English taxes
cannot so much as protract our ruin without him. So we are staked on
four chances; his power, its permanence, the success of his projects,
and the duration of his life. Any one of these failing, we are gone.
_Propria haec si dona fuissent!_ This is no unfair representation;
ultimately all hangs on his life, because, in his account of every set
of men that have held or supported administration, he finds neither
virtue nor ability in any but himself. Indeed he pays (through their
measures) some compliments to Lord Bute and Lord Despenser. But to the
latter, this is, I suppose, but a civility to old acquaintance: to the
former, a little stroke of politics. We may therefore fairly say, that
our only hope is his life; and he has, to make it the more so, taken
care to cut off any resource which we possessed independently of him.

In the next place it may be said, to excuse any appearance of
inconsistency between the author's actions and his declarations, that he
thought it right to relieve the landed interest, and lay the burden
where it ought to lie, on the colonies. What! to take off a revenue so
necessary to our being, before anything whatsoever was acquired in the
place of it? In prudence, he ought to have waited at least for the first
quarter's receipt of the new anonymous American revenue, and Irish
land-tax. Is there something so specific for our disorders in American,
and something so poison