nparalleled generosity forgets, and consequently
contradicts the next half-hour. He never yet considered whether any
proposition were true or false, but whether it were convenient for the
present minute or company to affirm or deny it; so that if you think to
refine upon him, by interpreting every thing he says, as we do dreams by
the contrary, you are still to seek, and will find yourself equally
deceived, whether you believe him or no: the only remedy is to suppose
that you have heard some inarticulate sounds, without any meaning at all.
And besides, that will take off the horror you might be apt to conceive
at the oaths wherewith he perpetually tags both ends of every
proposition: though at the same time I think he cannot with any justice
be taxed for perjury, when he invokes God and Christ, because he has
often fairly given public notice to the world, that he believes in
neither.

Some people may think that such an accomplishment as this, can be of no
great use to the owner or his party, after it has been often practised,
and is become notorious; but they are widely mistaken: Few lies carry the
inventor's mark; and the most prostitute enemy to truth may spread a
thousand without being known for the author. Besides, as the vilest
writer has his readers, so the greatest liar has his believers; and it
often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done
its work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and
Truth comes limping after it; so that when men come to be undeceived, it
is too late, the jest is over, and the tale has had its effect: like a
man who has thought of a good repartee, when the discourse is changed, or
the company parted: or, like a physician who has found out an infallible
medicine, after the patient is dead.

Considering that natural disposition in many men to lie, and in
multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim,
so frequent in every body's mouth, that "Truth will at last prevail."
Here, has this island of ours, for the greatest part of twenty years,
lain under the influence of such counsels and persons, whose principle
and interest it was to corrupt our manners, blind our understandings,
drain our wealth, and in time destroy our constitution both in Church and
State; and we at last were brought to the very brink of ruin; yet by the
means of perpetual misrepresentations, have never been able to
distinguish between our enemies and fr