nd the rigid integrity of
the first and second Pitt, reversed the story as read in these fables;
the court became pure, the king true, the ministers honest, and the
nation progressed from the miserable peace of Utrecht, in 1714, to the
proud position we held on its centenary at Vienna, in 1814. We may
grant, then, that Gay had reason on his side when he inveighed so
bitterly against courts and kings; and, granting that, we may recognise
the amelioration of the court of the present day, wholly free from
corruption and presenting a school to be followed rather than contemned.

In the fable of the 'Degenerate Bees,' Gay takes the part of the Tory
ministry,--Oxford, Bolingbroke, Dean Swift, and Mat. Prior; and in the
'Ant in Office' he alludes to a Whig minister of that day. We must not
be too hard on ministers. Kings and the nation have been open to bribes
and assenting to French diplomacy,--

"When policy regained what arms had lost."

Louis XI. purchased the retreat of Edward IV. in 1475, when he seized
on the domains of King Rene--Provence, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and
Lorraine, and Burgundy from the domains of Charles the Bold; when we
abandoned our blood allies for bribes. Again, in 1681, Charles II. was
the pensioner of Louis XIV., when Louis seized on Strasbourg. William
III. reluctantly let it pass at the peace and treaty of Ryswick, which
Louis dictated; and it was very basely abandoned by us at the peace of
Utrecht, in 1714, when we abandoned our ally the emperor, and the
degenerate Bees of the fable suffered exile and the Tower, barely
escaping death from the indignant nation. Again, in the treaty of
Vienna, 1814, we sacrificed the interests of Austria to France, in
ceding to the latter the pillaged counties of the Messin and of Alsace.
Finding, therefore, like results from wholly different causes, we must
not be extreme to judge, but, with Gay, admit the ministers of 1714 to
grace, for they only then did what we sanctioned in 1814, and which 1870
sees righted, and the German towns restored to Germany.

I am now rounding off half a century in which I have wandered in this
wilderness of a world, and in all that time I have never known, or heard
of, corruption in a minister of state. I have seen and known many fall
untimely to ministerial labours and responsibility. Walking through the
streets and squares we may behold the noble brows of Pitt, Canning, Lord
George Bentinck, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston--