after ages. Your lordship's administration has already taken up
a considerable part of the English annals; and many of its most
happy years are owing to it. His Majesty, the most knowing judge
of men, and the best master, has acknowledged the ease and
benefit he receives in the incomes of his treasury, which you
found not only disordered, but exhausted. All things were in the
confusion of a chaos, without form or method, if not reduced
beyond it, even to annihilation; so that you had not only
to separate the jarring elements, but (if that boldness of
expression might be allowed me) to create them. Your enemies
had so embroiled the management of your office, that they looked
on your advancement as the instrument of your ruin. And as if
the clogging of the revenue, and the confusion of accounts, which
you found in your entrance, were not sufficient, they added their
own weight of malice to the public calamity, by forestalling the
credit which should cure it. Your friends on the other side were
only capable of pitying, but not of aiding you; no further help
or counsel was remaining to you, but what was founded on
yourself; and that indeed was your security; for your diligence,
your constancy, and your prudence, wrought most surely within,
when they were not disturbed by any outward motion. The highest
virtue is best to be trusted with itself; for assistance only can
be given by a genius superior to that which it assists; and it is
the noblest kind of debt, when we are only obliged to God and
nature. This then, my lord, is your just commendation, and that
you have wrought out yourself a way to glory, by those very means
that were designed for your destruction: You have not only
restored but advanced the revenues of your master, without
grievance to the subject; and, as if that were little yet,
the debts of the exchequer, which lay heaviest both on the crown,