adventurer, his selfish ambition, his sordid cupidity, his
vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public spirit. The most greedy and
cruel wrecker that ever put up false lights to lure mariners to their
destruction will do his best to preserve a ship from going to pieces
on the rocks, if he is taken on board of her and made pilot; and so the
most profligate Chancellor of the Exchequer most wish that trade may
flourish, that the revenue may come in well, and that he may be able
to take taxes off instead of putting them on. The most profligate First
Lord of the Admiralty must wish to receive news of a victory like that
of the Nile rather than of a mutiny like that at the Nore. There is,
therefore, a limit to the evil which is to be apprehended from the worst
ministry that is likely ever to exist in England. But to the evil of
having no ministry, to the evil of having a House of Commons permanently
at war with the executive government, there is absolutely no limit. This
was signally proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the statesmen of the junto, as
soon as they had ascertained the temper of the new Parliament, acted as
statesmen similarly situated would now act, great calamities would have
been averted. The chiefs of the opposition must then have been called
upon to form a government. With the power of the late ministry the
responsibility of the late ministry would have been transferred to them;
and that responsibility would at once have sobered them. The orator
whose eloquence had been the delight of the Country party would have had
to exert his ingenuity on a new set of topics. There would have been
an end of his invectives against courtiers and placemen, of piteous
meanings about the intolerable weight of the land tax, of his boasts
that the militia of Kent and Sussex, without the help of a single
regular soldier, would turn the conquerors of Landen to the right about.
He would himself have been a courtier; he would himself have been a
placeman; he would have known that he should be held accountable for
all the misery which a national bankruptcy or a French invasion might
produce; and, instead of labouring to get up a clamour for the reduction
of imposts, and the disbanding of regiments, he would have employed all
his talents and influence for the purpose of obtaining from Parliament
the means of supporting public credit, and of putting the country in a
good posture of defence. Meanwhile the statesmen who were out might have
wat