rs, and
mistakes in every article besides that of enriching and aggrandizing
himself.

For these reasons the faults of men, who are most trusted in public
business, are, of all others, the most difficult to be defended. A man
may be persuaded into a wrong opinion, wherein he hath small concern:
but no oratory can have the power over a sober man against the
conviction of his own senses: and therefore, as I take it, the money
thrown away on such advocates might be more prudently spared, and kept
in such a minister's own pocket, than lavished in hiring a corporation
of pamphleteers to defend his conduct, and prove a kingdom to be
flourishing in trade and wealth, which every particular subject (except
those few already excepted) can lawfully swear, and, by dear experience
knows, to be a falsehood.

Give me leave, noble sir, in the way of argument, to suppose this to be
your case; could you in good conscience, or moral justice, chide your
paper-advocates for their ill success in persuading the world against
manifest demonstration? Their miscarriage is owing, alas! to want of
matter. Should we allow them to be masters of wit, raillery, or
learning, yet the subject would not admit them to exercise their
talents; and, consequently, they can have no recourse but to impudence,
lying, and scurrility.

I must confess, that the author of your letter to me hath carried this
last qualification to a greater height than any of his fellows: but he
hath, in my opinion, failed a little in point of politeness from the
original which he affects to imitate. If I should say to a prime
minister, "Sir, you have sufficiently provided that Dunkirk should be
absolutely demolished and never repaired; you took the best advantages
of a long and general peace to discharge the immense debts of the
nation; you did wonders with the fleet; you made the Spaniards submit to
our quiet possession of Gibraltar and Portmahon; you never enriched
yourself and family at the expense of the public."--Such is the style of
your supposed letter, which however, if I am well informed, by no means
comes up to the refinements of a fishwife in Billingsgate. "You never
had a bastard by Tom the waterman; you never stole a silver tankard; you
were never whipped at the cart's tail."

In the title of your letter, it is said to be "occasioned by the late
invectives on the King, her Majesty, and all the Royal Family:" and the
whole contents of the paper (stripped from your elo