sometimes affected to do it in private; he visited the other ministers
and great officers of the court, but on all occasions publicly owned the
character and appellation of a Whig; and in secret, held continual
meetings with the Duke of Marlborough, and the other discontented lords,
where M. Bothmar usually assisted. It is the great ambition of this
prince to be perpetually engaged in war, without considering the cause
or consequence; and to see himself at the head of an army, where only he
can make any considerable figure. He is not without a natural tincture
of that cruelty, sometimes charged upon the Italians; and being nursed
in arms, hath so far extinguished pity and remorse, that he will at any
time sacrifice a thousand men's lives, to a caprice of glory or revenge.
He had conceived an incurable hatred for the treasurer, as the person
who principally opposed this insatiable passion for war; said he had
hopes of others, but that the treasurer was _un mechant diable_, not to
be moved; therefore, since it was impossible for him or his friends to
compass their designs, while that minister continued at the head of
affairs, he proposed an expedient, often practised by those of his
country, that the treasurer (to use his own expression) should be taken
off, _a la negligence_; that this might easily be done, and pass for an
effect of chance, if it were preceded by encouraging some proper people
to commit small riots in the night: and in several parts of the town, a
crew of obscure ruffians were accordingly employed about that time, who
probably exceeded their commission; and mixing themselves with those
disorderly people that often infest the streets at midnight, acted
inhuman outrages on many persons, whom they cut and mangled in the face
and arms, and other parts of the body, without any provocation; but an
effectual stop was soon put to these enormities, which probably
prevented the execution of the main design.[75]

[Footnote 75: Erasmus Lewis, Lord Oxford, and the others who read the
MS., advised the elimination of this insinuation against Prince Eugene.
They thought there was truth in it, but "a matter of so high a nature,"
as Lewis expressed it to Swift, "ought not to be asserted without
exhibiting the proofs." The paragraph following the one in the text,
containing the imputation, seems as if it had been written after Swift
had received Lewis's strictures. [T.S.]]

I am very sensible, that such an imputation oug