and on private persons, have by your conduct been established
in a certainty of satisfaction. An action so much the more great
and honourable, because the case was without the ordinary relief
of laws; above the hopes of the afflicted and beyond the
narrowness of the treasury to redress, had it been managed by a
less able hand. It is certainly the happiest, and most unenvied
part of all your fortune, to do good to many, while you do injury
to none; to receive at once the prayers of the subject, and the
praises of the prince; and, by the care of your conduct, to give
him means of exerting the chiefest (if any be the chiefest)
of his royal virtues, his distributive justice to the deserving,
and his bounty and compassion to the wanting. The disposition
of princes towards their people cannot be better discovered than
in the choice of their ministers; who, like the animal spirits
betwixt the soul and body, participate somewhat of both natures,
and make the communication which is betwixt them. A king, who is
just and moderate in his nature, who rules according to the laws,
whom God has made happy by forming the temper of his soul to the
constitution of his government, and who makes us happy, by
assuming over us no other sovereignty than that wherein our
welfare and liberty consists; a prince, I say, of so excellent
a character, and so suitable to the wishes of all good men, could
not better have conveyed himself into his people's apprehensions,
than in your lordship's person; who so lively express the same
virtues, that you seem not so much a copy, as an emanation of
him. Moderation is doubtless an establishment of greatness; but
there is a steadiness of temper which is likewise requisite in a
minister of state; so equal a mixture of both virtues, that he
may stand like an isthmus betwixt the two encroaching seas of
arbitrary power, and lawless anarchy. The undertaking would be