e heard
L---- and P---- [2], when they have made a vigorous opposition, or
blasted the blossom of some ministerial scheme, cry out, in the height
of their exultations, "This will deserve the thanks of posterity!" And
when their adversaries, as it much more frequently falls out, have
outnumbered and overthrown them, they will say, with an air of revenge
and a kind of gloomy triumph, "Posterity will curse you for this."

It is common among men, under the influence of any kind of phrensy, to
believe that all the world has the same odd notions that disorder their
own imaginations. Did these unhappy men, these deluded patriots, know
how little we are concerned about posterity, they would never attempt to
fright us with their curses, or tempt us to a neglect of our own
interest by a prospect of their gratitude.

But so strong is their infatuation, that they seem to have forgotten
even the primary law of self-preservation; for they sacrifice, without
scruple, every flattering hope, every darling enjoyment, and every
satisfaction of life, to this ruling passion, and appear, in every step,
to consult not so much their own advantage, as that of posterity.

Strange delusion! that can confine all their thoughts to a race of men
whom they neither know, nor can know; from whom nothing is to be feared,
nor any thing expected; who cannot even bribe a special jury, nor have
so much as a single riband to bestow.

This fondness for posterity is a kind of madness which at Rome was once
almost epidemical, and infected even the women and the children. It
reigned there till the entire destruction of Carthage; after which it
began to be less general, and in a few years afterwards a remedy was
discovered, by which it was almost entirely extinguished.

In England it never prevailed in any such degree: some few of the
ancient barons seem, indeed, to have been disordered by it; but the
contagion has been, for the, most part, timely checked, and our ladies
have been generally free.

But there has been, in every age, a set of men, much admired and
reverenced, who have affected to be always talking of posterity, and
have laid out their lives upon the composition of poems, for the sake of
being applauded by this imaginary generation.

The present poets I reckon amongst the most inexorable enemies of our
most excellent ministry, and much doubt whether any method will effect
the cure of a distemper, which, in this class of men, may be termed, not