cupidity, his vanity, his cowardice, into a sort of public
spirit. The most greedy and cruel wrecker that ever put up false
lights to lure mariners to their destruction will do his best to
preserve a ship from going to pieces on the rocks, if he is taken
on board of her and made pilot; and so the most profligate
Chancellor of the Exchequer most wish that trade may flourish,
that the revenue may come in well, and that he may be able to
take taxes off instead of putting them on. The most profligate
First Lord of the Admiralty must wish to receive news of a
victory like that of the Nile rather than of a mutiny like that
at the Nore. There is, therefore, a limit to the evil which is to
be apprehended from the worst ministry that is likely ever to
exist in England. But to the evil of having no ministry, to the
evil of having a House of Commons permanently at war with the
executive government, there is absolutely no limit. This was
signally proved in 1699 and 1700. Had the statesmen of the junto,
as soon as they had ascertained the temper of the new Parliament,
acted as statesmen similarly situated would now act, great
calamities would have been averted. The chiefs of the opposition
must then have been called upon to form a government. With the
power of the late ministry the responsibility of the late
ministry would have been transferred to them; and that
responsibility would at once have sobered them. The orator whose
eloquence had been the delight of the Country party would have
had to exert his ingenuity on a new set of topics. There would
have been an end of his invectives against courtiers and
placemen, of piteous meanings about the intolerable weight of the
land tax, of his boasts that the militia of Kent and Sussex,
without the help of a single regular soldier, would turn the
conquerors of Landen to the right about. He would himself have