and
divided as possible.

However, we must take care not to be mistaken, or to imagine that such
persons have any weight in their opposition. When, by them,
administration is convinced of its insignificancy, they are soon to be
convinced of their own. They never are suffered to succeed in their
opposition. They and the world are to be satisfied, that neither office,
nor authority, nor property, nor ability, eloquence, counsel, skill, or
union, are of the least importance; but that the mere influence of the
court, naked of all support, and destitute of all management, is
abundantly sufficient for all its own purposes.

When any adverse connection is to be destroyed, the cabal seldom appear
in the work themselves. They find out some person of whom the party
entertains a high opinion. Such a person they endeavor to delude with
various pretences. They teach him first to distrust, and then to quarrel
with his friends; among whom, by the same arts, they excite a similar
diffidence of him; so that in this mutual fear and distrust, he may
suffer himself to be employed as the instrument in the change which is
brought about. Afterwards they are sure to destroy him in his turn, by
setting up in his place some person in whom he had himself reposed the
greatest confidence, and who serves to carry off a considerable part of
his adherents.

When such a person has broke in this manner with his connections, he is
soon compelled to commit some flagrant act of iniquitous, personal
hostility against some of them (such as an attempt to strip a particular
friend of his family estate), by which the cabal hope to render the
parties utterly irreconcilable. In truth, they have so contrived
matters, that people have a greater hatred to the subordinate
instruments than to the principal movers.

As in destroying their enemies they make use of instruments not
immediately belonging to their corps, so in advancing their own friends
they pursue exactly the same method. To promote any of them to
considerable rank or emolument, they commonly take care that the
recommendation shall pass through the hands of the ostensible ministry:
such a recommendation might however appear to the world, as some proof
of the credit of ministers, and some means of increasing their strength.
To prevent this, the persons so advanced are directed, in all companies,
industriously to declare, that they are under no obligations whatsoever
to administration; that they have r