ose all
men's fortunes thine, and leave no house free from thy rapine, or lust?
&c."

This extract, to deal ingenuously, has cost me more pains than I think it
is worth, having only served to convince me, that modern corruptions are
not to be paralleled by ancient examples, without having recourse to
poetry or fable. For instance, I never read in story of a law enacted to
take away the force of all laws whatsoever;[16] by which a man may safely
commit upon the last of June, what he would infallibly be hanged for if
he committed on the first of July; by which the greatest criminals may
escape, provided they continue long enough in power to antiquate their
crimes, and by stifling them a while, can deceive the legislature into an
amnesty, of which the enactors do not at that time foresee the
consequence. A cautious merchant will be apt to suspect, when he finds a
man who has the repute of a cunning dealer, and with whom he has old
accounts, urging for a general release. When I reflect on this
proceeding, I am not surprised, that those who contrived a parliamentary
sponge for their crimes, are now afraid of a new revolution sponge for
their money: and if it were possible to contrive a sponge that could only
affect those who had need of the other, perhaps it would not be ill
employed.

[Footnote 1: No. 17 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2: Cicero, "In Q. Caec." i. 3: "They said that whatever luxury
could accomplish in the way of vice,... avarice in the way of plunder, or
arrogance in the way of insult, had all been borne by them for the last
three years, while this one man was praetor."--C.D. YONGE. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3: John Churchill, Duke of Maryborough, who had been
Captain-General since 1702. He was dismissed from all his offices,
December 31st, 1711. The Duke of Ormonde was appointed Commander-in-Chief
on January 4th. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4: Godolphin, Lord-Treasurer, nicknamed Volpone. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5: Charles, Earl of Sunderland, and Henry Boyle (1670-1725),
were Secretaries of State. Boyle was created Lord Carleton in 1714.
[T.S.]]

[Footnote 6: William; Earl Cowper (1665-1723), was Lord Chancellor under
Godolphin's administration (1707-1710), and also in 1714-1718. The
"Biographia Britannica" (second edition, vol. iv., p. 389 _n_.) refers to
a story that Cowper went through an informal marriage in the early
part of his life with a Mrs. Elizabeth Culling, of Hungerfordbury Park.
Cowper's first wife