dices to it. The scribblers I speak of have laid you therefore under great disadvantages, notwithstanding your elevation, and your power, whether you design any thing against the person so obnoxious to you or not. They should have concealed industriously what they have affected to proclaim; since it is certain that, how great soever your popularity in the nation may be, they will never bring up mankind to think that any person should be prosecuted by methods extraordinary, or even ordinary, purely for your ease, your pleasure, or your safety. If they could prove, what they frequently throw out, that every man is a friend to the Pretender who is not a friend to you; and that he who objects to your conduct in the administration, endeavors to pull down the present government, and set up another; then, indeed, they might raise a spirit against this particular person, for aught I know; but most certainly against many others, of much greater consequence, who appear every day, in the face of the world, not to be your friends, and who make no scruple of objecting, with the utmost freedom, to your conduct. But such assertions as these will only serve to make men angry, or laugh. They, who have the best opinion of your abilities, will no more agree that the present establishment is supported, than that it was made by you. They will never be wanting in their respect to the crown so much as to confound the cause of the king with the cause of his minister, or to suppose that the reins of government would grow weaker in his majesty's hand, if you was out of power, or out of the world. In short, sir,

you may pass, and I believe you do pass justly, for a man of extreme good parts, and for a minister of much experience; but you would not desire, I think, to be represented as the Atlas who supports this state; and your brother will not certainly pass for the Hercules who relieves you, and who sustains, in his turn, the important burthen.

I know very well that something is added to supply, if that were possible, this defect, and to make the cause more plausible. It is pretended that the writings imputed to this particular person, and several others published in the Craftsman, contain reflections of a very extravagant, indecent, and even seditious nature; such as they alone, who are capable of supposing them, are capable of making. But then these reflections are to be proved by the constructions which the accusers make of the expressions employed by those whom they accuse; constructions as arbitrary and as forced as many of those by which some of the best men at Rome were brought within the interpretation of the law of majesty, by some of the worst. Examples of much the same sort have been set even in Britain, whilst the practice prevailed of supposing innuendoes, and parallels, and oblique

meanings, and prosecuting and condemning men on suppositions and interpretations. But there is no room to fear that any such examples should be renewed, whilst a British spirit prevails in a British parliament.* Whilst that spirit prevails, no parliament will condemn any man upon principles which parliaments have always condemned as unjust and tyrannical. Less than any will they condemn those who write in defence of this constitution, at the request and on the instance of those who attack it. A British spirit and the spirit of the British constitution are one and the same;t and therefore if ever there arises a British spirit in a British parliament, of which I presume no doubt ought to be made at this time, vengeance will not overtake the former; it may be the latter.

What hath been said might suffice to show how foolish and vain it is to throw out menaces against those who have nothing to fear, at a time, when zeal to preserve the constitution in every part inviolate seems daily to increase. But since I have entered on the subject, and the matter seems of some concernment to you, give me leave to add one consideration more, that may serve to show how foolish and vain such a proceeding would be, even at any other time. Let us suppose that the very person pointed at was, and could be proved to be, the author of this Dissertation upon Parties, for instance, which I now dedicate to you. Let us suppose that the resolution was taken to follow the generous and equitable advice of the pamphlet-writer, who thinks he ought to be proceeded against in a peculiar manner. Let us even suppose that we lived in an age, when parliaments were brought, in some degree, under that very dependency, against which so much is said in this dissertation. In short, let us suppose that the most innocent man, who was obnoxious to those in power, might have reasonable grounds to fear an exorbitant exercise of this power against him. But then let us make one single supposition on the other side. Let us suppose that this obnoxious man was really in earnest; that he wrote from his heart; and that he felt there the same warmth for the British constitution, which he expressed in his writings, and labored to infuse into the breast of every other man. I would ask you, sir, do you think such a man would be ashamed to avow, in the face of his country, the contents of the following sheets, or be afraid to suffer for them? Could any eloquence, even yours, if you would employ it so unworthily, expect, by the help of false surmises and invidious comments, the base inventions of little railers, to make him pass for an enemy to the present establish

See Some Considerations concerning the Public Funds, &c., p. 98.

† Ibid.

ment, who had proved himself a friend to that constitution, in consequence of which, and for the sake of which alone, this establishment was made? Would his endeavors to reconcile parties, and to abolish odious distinctions, would pleading for the attainment of all the ends proposed by, and promised at the revolution, for securing the independency of the two houses of parliament, and the freedom of elections, as effectually against corruption, as they are already secured against prerogative; would this, I say, make him pass for the greatest of criminals? No, sir, not in the breasts even of those who gave sentence against him, if men capable of giving such a sentence could be found. Among the rest of mankind his innocency would be acknowledged; his constancy would be applauded; his accusers, and his grand accuser in the first place, would pass alone for criminal. He might fall a victim to power; but truth, and reason, and the cause of liberty would fall with him; and he who is buried in their ruins, is happier than he who survives them. Thus I am persuaded the person here intended would be found, upon trial, to think. The event therefore of such a prosecution, whatever it might be, could not turn to his disadvantage; and consequently to threaten him with it would be ridiculous, even at such a time as we have supposed, much more at the present. Void of all ambition, except the ambition of honest fame, he might stand the efforts of violence in such a cause, not only with little concern, but with much inward complacency. Weary of the world, determined and preparing to retire totally from it, he would surely suspend his retreat to face the persecution; and whatever his persecutors might imagine, they would erect a sort of triumphal arch to the man they hated. He would leave the world with more honor than they would remain in it. By suffering in defence of the constitution of his country, they who had thought favorably of him, would think that he crowned the good, and they who had entertained prejudices against him, that he atoned for the ill which had been imputed to him. Such different judgments, you know, sir, will attend every man's character who acts on our divided stage; and he is happy who can reconcile them so nearly. It never happens that there is a man of whom all speak well, as it rarely, very rarely, happens that there is a man of whom all speak ill, except those who are hired to speak well.

I find it hard to leave off, when I have the honor of writing to you, sir; but having now explained the principal reasons that induced me to address this dedication to you, it is time that I should force myself to a conclusion, and conclude by recommending the following sheets to your serious perusal. I recommend them to nothing else. I do not apprehend that they will

want your patronage any more than the person who wrote them. Let them stand or fall in the public opinion, according to their merit. But if you should find any thing in them that deserves your notice, you will have an obligation to one, from whom you least expected any; to,

Sir, your most humble servant,

The AUTHOR OF THE DISSERTATION UPON PARTIES.

LETTER I.

SIR: To corrupt and to divide are the trite and wicked expedients, by which some ministers in all ages have affected to govern; but especially such as have been least capable of exerting the true arts of government] There is, however, a difference to be made between these two expedients, to the advantage of the latter, and by consequence between the characters of those who put them in practice.

Every busy, ambitious child of fortune, who hath himself a corrupt heart, and becomes master of a large purse, hath all that is necessary to employ the expedient of corruption with success. A bribe, in the hand of the most blundering coxcomb that ever disgraced honor and wealth and power, will prevail as much as in the hand of a man of sense, and go farther too, if it weigh more. An intriguing chamber-maid may slip a bank note into a griping paw, as well as the most subtle demon of hell. H**e may govern as triumphantly by this expedient as the great knight his brother, and the great knight as Burleigh himself.

But every character cannot attempt the other expedient of dividing, or keeping up divisions, with equal success. There is, indeed, no occasion for any extraordinary genius to divide; and true wisdom despises the infamous task. But there is need of that left-handed wisdom, called cunning, and of those habits in business, called experience. He that is corrupted, co-operates with him that corrupts. He runs into his arms at the first beckon; or, in order sometimes to raise the price, he meets him but half way. On the other hand, to divide, or to maintain and renew the divisions of parties in a state, a system of seduction and fraud is necessary to be carried on. The divided are so far from being accessory to the guilt, that they would not be divided, if they were not first deceived.

From these differences, which I have observed between the two expedients, and the characters and means proper to put them

in practice with success, it may be discovered perhaps why, upon former occasions, as I shall hereafter show, the expedient of dividing prospered so much better than that of corrupting; and why, upon some later occasions, the expedient of corrupting succeeds so well in those hands, which are not, and, I trust, will not be so lucky in maintaining or renewing our party divisions. Much hath been written by you, Mr. D'Anvers, by your correspondents and others, who have drawn their pens in the cause of truth, virtue, and liberty, against the right reverend, as well as undignified, the noble, as well as ignoble assertors of corruption; enough surely to shame those who have not lost all sense of shame, out of so ignominious a crime; and to make those who have not lost every other sense, tremble at the consequences of it. We may flatter ourselves that these honest endeavors have had some effect; and have reason to hope that far greater will follow from those illustrious examples of repulses, which have been lately given to the grand corrupter, notwithstanding his frequent and insolent declarations that he could seduce whomsoever he had a mind to gain. These hopes are farther confirmed to us by repeated declarations of the sense of parliament, and will be turned, we doubt not, into certainty, whenever the wisdom of the two houses shall again think it proper to raise new barriers of law against this encroaching vice.

In the mean time, I think nothing can better answer the designs of your papers, nor promote the public good more effectually in the present conjuncture, than to put our countrymen frequently on their guard against the artifice, which is clumsily, but industriously employed to maintain, and, if it be possible, to create new divisions amongst them. That day, which our fathers wished to see, and did not see, is now breaking upon us. Shall we suffer this light to be tured again into party-darkness by the incantations of those who would not have passed for conjurers, even in the days of superstition and ignorance? The nation is not only brought into an uniformity of opinion concerning the present administration, by the length and the righteous conduct of it; but we are grown into an unanimity about principles of government, which the most sanguine could scarce have expected, without extravagance. Certain associations of ideas were made so familiar to us, about half a century ago, and became in the course of time so habitual, that we should not have been able, even a few years ago, to break them, nor have been easily induced to believe, on the faith of any prediction, that experience and the evidence of facts would, in a few years more, break them for us, destroy all our notions of party, and substitute new ones in their room.

The power and majesty of the people, an original contract, the

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