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.
Pages:
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90