rt of our
just expectations under the treaty, he rejected them. Our then
ministers, knowing that, in their administration, the people's minds
were set at ease upon all the essential points of public and private
liberty, and that no project of theirs could endanger the concord of the
empire, were under no restraint from pursuing every just demand upon
foreign nations.

The author, towards the end of this work, falls into reflections upon
the state of public morals in this country: he draws use from this
doctrine, by recommending his friend to the king and the public, as
another Duke of Sully; and he concludes the whole performance with a
very devout prayer.

The prayers of politicians may sometimes be sincere; and as this prayer
is in substance, that the author, or his friends, may be soon brought
into power, I have great reason to believe it is very much from the
heart. It must be owned too that after he has drawn such a picture, such
a shocking picture, of the state of this country, he has great faith in
thinking the means he prays for sufficient to relieve us: after the
character he has given of its inhabitants of all ranks and classes, he
has great charity in caring much about them; and indeed no less hope, in
being of opinion, that such a detestable nation can ever become the care
of Providence. He has not even found five good men in our devoted city.

He talks indeed of men of virtue and ability. But where are his _men_ of
virtue and ability to be found? Are they in the present administration?
Never were a set of people more blackened by this author. Are they among
the party of those (no small body) who adhere to the system of 1766?
These it is the great purpose of this book to calumniate. Are they the
persons who acted with his great friend, since the change in 1762, to
his removal in 1765? Scarcely any of these are now out of employment;
and we are in possession of his desideratum. Yet I think he hardly means
to select, even some of the highest of them, as examples fit for the
reformation of a corrupt world.

He observes, that the virtue of the most exemplary prince that ever
swayed a sceptre "can never warm or illuminate the body of his people,
if foul mirrors are placed so near him as to refract and dissipate the
rays at their first emanation."[99] Without observing upon the
propriety of this metaphor, or asking how mirrors come to have lost
their old quality of reflecting, and to have acquired that of
ref