been a courtier; he would himself have been a placeman; he would
have known that he should be held accountable for all the misery
which a national bankruptcy or a French invasion might produce;
and, instead of labouring to get up a clamour for the reduction
of imposts, and the disbanding of regiments, he would have
employed all his talents and influence for the purpose of
obtaining from Parliament the means of supporting public credit,
and of putting the country in a good posture of defence.
Meanwhile the statesmen who were out might have watched the new
men, might have checked them when they were wrong, might have
come to their help when, by doing right, they had raised a mutiny
in their own absurd and perverse faction. In this way Montague
and Somers might, in opposition, have been really far more
powerful than they could be while they filled the highest posts
in the executive government and were outvoted every day in the
House of Commons. Their retirement would have mitigated envy;
their abilities would have been missed and regretted; their
unpopularity would have passed to their successors, who would
have grievously disappointed vulgar expectation, and would have
been under the necessity of eating their own words in every
debate. The league between the Tories and the discontented Whigs
would have been dissolved; and it is probable that, in a session
or two, the public voice would have loudly demanded the recall of
the best Keeper of the Great Seal, and of the best First Lord of
the Treasury, the oldest man living could remember.

But these lessons, the fruits of the experience of five
generations, had never been taught to the politicians of the
seventeenth century. Notions imbibed before the Revolution still
kept possession of the public mind. Not even Somers, the foremost