practices that then prevailed: I say, it is a little hard
that the vilest mercenaries should be countenanced, preferred, rewarded,
for discharging their brutalities against men of honour, only upon a
bare conjecture.

If it should happen that these profligates have attacked an innocent
person, I ask what satisfaction can their hirers give in return? Not all
the wealth raked together by the most corrupt rapacious ministers, in
the longest course of unlimited power, would be sufficient to atone for
the hundredth part of such an injury.

In the common way of thinking, it is a situation sufficient in all
conscience to satisfy a reasonable ambition, for a private person to
command the forces, the laws, the revenues of a great kingdom, to
reward and advance his followers and flatterers as he pleases, and to
keep his enemies (real or imaginary) in the dust. In such an exaltation,
why should he be at the trouble to make use of fools to sound his
praises, (because I always thought the lion was hard set, when he chose
the ass for his trumpeter) or knaves to revenge his quarrels, at the
expense of innocent men's reputations?

With all those advantages, I cannot see why persons, in the height of
power, should be under the least concern on account of their reputation,
for which they have no manner of use; or to ruin that of others, which
may perhaps be the only possession their enemies have left them.
Supposing times of corruption, which I am very far from doing, if a
writer displays them in their proper colours, does he do anything worse
than sending customers to the shop? "Here only, at the sign of the
Brazen 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