with
_fleurs de lis_ and triple crowns; their girdles hung round with
chains, and beads, and wooden shoes; and your worst enemies adorned
with the ensigns of liberty, property, indulgence, moderation, and a
cornucopia in their hands. Her large wings, like those of a
flying-fish, are of no use but while they are moist; she therefore
dips them in mud, and, soaring aloft, scatters it in the eyes of the
multitude, flying with great swiftness; but at every turn is forced to
stoop in dirty ways for new supplies.

I have been sometimes thinking, if a man had the art of the second
sight for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits,
how admirably he might entertain himself in this town, by observing
the different shapes, sizes, and colours of those swarms of lies which
buzz about the heads of some people, like flies about a horse's ears
in summer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in
Exchange-alley, enough to darken the air; or over a club of
discontented grandees, and thence sent down in cargoes to be scattered
at elections.

There is one essential point wherein a political liar differs from
others of the faculty, that he ought to have but a short memory, which
is necessary according to the various occasions he meets with every
hour of differing from himself and swearing to both sides of a
contradiction, as he finds the persons disposed with whom he has to
deal. In describing the virtues and vices of mankind, it is
convenient, upon every article, to have some eminent person in our
eye, from whom we copy our description. I have strictly observed this
rule, and my imagination this minute represents before me a certain
great man famous for this talent, to the constant practice of which he
owes his twenty years' reputation of the most skilful head in England
for the management of nice affairs. The superiority of his genius
consists in nothing else but an inexhaustible fund of political lies,
which he plentifully distributes every minute he speaks, and by an
unparalleled 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 fit to refine
upon him by interpreting everything he says, as we do dreams, by the
contrary, you are still to seek, and will find yourself equally
deceived whether you believe or not: the only re