.
But these may be learned from the most vulgar and accessible sources of
information. And you will please to observe, that I suffer nothing to
creep into this political testament, more valuable than those of
Richelieu, Mazarine, and Alberoni, that is not entirely original matter.
My lord, I defy you to learn a single particular of the refinements here
communicated from the greatest statesman that lives. They talk of Fox!
He would give his right hand for an atom of them!

I will now suppose you, my lord, by all these artifices, arrived at the
very threshold of power. I will suppose that you have just defeated the
grandest and the wisest measure of your political antagonists. I think
there is nothing more natural, though the rule will admit of many
exceptions, than for people who act uniformly in opposition to each
other, upon public grounds, to be of opposite characters and
dispositions. I will therefore imagine, that, shocked with the boundless
extortions and the relentless cruelties that have been practised in some
distant part of the empire, they came forward with a measure full of
generous oblivion for the part, providing with circumspect and collected
humanity for the future. I will suppose, that they were desirous of
taking an impotent government out of the hands of Jews and pedlars, old
women and minors, and to render it a part of the great system. I will
suppose, that they were desirous of transferring political power from a
company of rapacious and interested merchants, into the hands of
statesmen, men distinguished among a thousand parties for clear
integrity, disinterested virtue, and spotless fame. This, my lord, would
be a field worthy of your lordship's prowess. Could you but gain the
interested, could you eternize rapacity, and preserve inviolate the blot
of the English name, what laurels would not your lordship deserve?

I will therefore suppose, that your gracious master meets you with a
_carte blanche_, that he is disposed to listen to all your advices, and
to adopt all your counsels. Your lordship is aware that the road of
secret influence, and that of popular favour, are not exactly the same.
No ministry can long preserve their seats unless they possess the
confidence of a majority of the house of commons. The ministry therefore
against which your lordship acts, we will take it for granted are in
this predicament. In this situation then an important question naturally
arises. Either a majority in th