private interest, or private pique; this person is applauded for his opposition to such requests, for his just and fatal discernment.

What fatality there may be in his discernment, I know not; but surely there is a fatality, which attends those who indulge themselves in speaking and writing, without any regard to truth. How could it happen else that the remarker should so egregiously contradict himself, and destroy in his fortieth page the whole drift of his thirty-ninth? This bold and rash scribbler takes upon him to marshal and to characterise insolently the friends of the man he rails at. If I was not of that number myself, I should probably say more on the subject. This however I am under an obligation to say; that the friends of this gentleman must be such to his person. They cannot be so to his power. That he takes it as the greatest compliment, which can be made to him, to have a sympathy of nature and a conformity of principles and designs with them attributed to him; that he thinks their friendship an honor to him; such an honor as the warmest of his enemies have cause to envy, and do envy; such an honor as the highest of his enemies would be heartily proud to obtain, and have not been able to obtain.

The friends now of this gentleman, whom he is sometimes said to lead, and who are sometimes said to employ him as their tool, just as it suits the present purpose of scandal to say; these very friends, it seems, the very men, who defend him, "would never raise him above his present low condition, nor make him the partner of their success." However they may employ him, the remarker and his patrons know how they mean to reward him. Since this is the case, since they know it to be so; for what reason, in the name of wonder, is all this bustle made about so insignificant a tool? Why so many endeavors to raise a jealousy, and give an alarm, as if this man was aiming again at power? Why so much merit ascribed to the noble pair, for keeping him out of it? His own friends would not raise him to it. How ridiculous then is the affectation of his enemies, who value themselves on their opposition to him?

Let the noble pair stand or fall by their own merits, or demerits. I dare answer to them and to the world, upon better foundations than those of the remarker's laying, that their countinuance in power will never break the spirit of this man, nor their fall from it excite his ambition. His ambition, whatever may have been said or thought about it, hath been long since dead. A man must be dead himself, who is utterly insensible of all that happens, either to the public or to himself; but he who seeks nothing but retreat, and that stability of situation, which is essential to the quiet of it, hath surely no ambition. Now that this is the case, and hath been long the case of the gentleman, concern

ing whom I speak, I know to be true, and I affirm boldly. He never had the least, I say more, he never would have the greatest obligations to any country, except his own; and yet so desirous was this man of rest and quiet, that he was contented to enjoy them where fortune had presented them to him. A little frankness might have kept him abroad all his life, without complaint. Much art has been employed to confine him at home, and to teaze him there. If forgetting all former persecutions, he resented the last, would he be much to blame?

I am not conscious of having said, in this paper, a word against the truth; and I am sure that I have the same truth on my side, when I assert that this man, whom the libeller represents to be so turbulent, so outrageous, and of such pertinacious ambition, however he might have been willing formerly to have had the obligation to the noble pair, of enjoying, by their assistance, the full measure of his late majesty's intended goodness, would decline with scorn, after all that has passed, to be reinstated in his former situation, at the intolerable expense of having the least appearance of an obligation to them. Neither they, nor their advocates, can be half so solicitous to keep him out of power, and even out of a state of aspiring after power, as he is determined against the first, and indifferent about the last.

I am sensible that all this may appear a little improbable to the persons I oppose. It will be hard for them to conceive that the man, who has once tasted power, can ever renounce it in earnest. No wonder they should think in this manner. Those who find nothing in themselves to rest upon with satisfaction, must lean on power, on riches, or both, and on other external objects. Nay, those who have of the two vices, ambition and avarice, the meanest in the most eminent degree; and who would be glad to quit their power, and to retire with their gains, may be afraid to quit it, because they have abused it. They may be so miserable as to see no security out of power, nor any other in it, except that precarious, that temporary security, which is the last and useful refuge of desperate men; the continuing the same violences to maintain, by which they acquired, their power; the keeping up of dissensions, and the embroiling of affairs; those noble arts, by which they rose.

But there are men in the world, who know that there is something in life better than power, and riches; and such men may prefer the low condition, as it is called by the remarker, of one man, to the high condition of another. There are men who see that dignity may be disgraced, and who feel that disgrace may be dignified. Of this number is the gentleman whom I have undertaken to defend; who possesses his soul without hopes or fears, and enjoys his retreat without any desires beyond it. In

that retreat, he is obedient to the laws, dutiful to his prince, and true to his oaths. If he fails in these respects, let him be publicly attacked; let public vengeance pursue and overtake him; let the noble pair indulge for once their passions in a just cause. If they have no complaints, of this nature, to make against him, from whence does this particular animosity proceed? Have they complaints of any other kind to make, and of a private nature? If they have, why is the public troubled on this account? I hope the remarker's mask is now taken off; that the true drift of all this personal railing is enough exposed; and that the attention of mankind will be brought back to those more important subjects, which have been already started, and to those which every day may furnish.

After what has been here said, the gentleman, in whose defence I have appeared, can have no reason of honor to enter, by himself, or his friends, into these altercations; and if my opinion can prevail, should these libellers continue to scold, and to call names, they should be left to do it, without reproof, or notice. The answer now given should stand as a "Final answer to all they have said, and to all they may think fit to say hereafter."

40*

ON LUXURY.

A DISCOURSE On Operas, and the gayer pleasures of the town, may seem to be too trifling for the important scene of affairs, in which we are at present engaged; but I must own my fears, that they will bear too great a part in the success of a war, to make the consideration of them foreign to it. A very little reflection on history will suggest this observation, that every nation has made either a great or inconsiderable figure in the world, as it has fallen into luxury or resisted its temptations. What people are more distinguished than the Persians under Cyrus, nursed up in virtue, and inured to labor and toil? Yet (in the short space of 220 years*) they became so contemptible under Darius, as scarce to give honor to the conqueror's sword. The Spartans, and the long-rulers of the world, the Romans, speak the same language; and I wish future history may not furnish more modern examples.

When the mind is enervated by luxury, the body soon falls an easy victim to it; for how is it possible to imagine, that a man can be capable of the great and generous sentiments, which virtue inspires, whose mind is filled with the soft ideas, and wanton delicacies that pleasure must infuse? And were it possible to be warmed with such notions, could it ever put them in execution? For toils and fatigues would be difficulties unsurmountable to a soul dissolved in ease. Nor are these imaginary, speculative ideas of a closet; but such as have been the guide and policies of the wisest states. Of this we have the most remarkable instance in Herodotus. "The Persians, after their great and extended conquests, desired Cyrus to give them leave to remove out of their own barren and mountainous country into one more blest by the indulgence of providence. But that great and wise prince, revolving the effect in his mind, bid them do as they would; telling them at the same time, that for the future they must not expect to command, but obey; for providence had so

* Liv. lib. 9, cap. 19.

ordered it, that an effeminate race of people were the certain produce of a delicious country." What regard the great historian had to this opinion, may be easily collected from his reserving it for the conclusion of this excellent piece. And the case is directly the same, whether pleasures are the natural product of a country, or adventitious exotics. They will have the same effect, and cause the same extended ruin. How often have they revenged the captive's cause and made the conqueror's sword the instrument of his own undoing? Capua destroyed the bravest army which Italy ever saw, flushed with conquest, and commanded by Hannibal. The moment Capua was taken, that moment the walls of Carthage trembled. What was it that destroyed the republic of Athens, but the conduct of Pericles;* who by his pernicious politics first debauched the people's minds with shows and festivals, and all the studied arts of ease and luxury; that he might, in the mean time, securely guide the reins of empire, and riot in dominion? He first laid the foundation of Philip's power; nor had a man of Macedon ever thought of enslaving Greece, if Pericles had not first made them slaves to pleasure. That great statesman Tiberiust clearly saw what was the surest instrument of arbitrary power; and therefore refused to have luxury redressed, when application was made to him in the senate for that purpose. Artful princes have frequently introduced it with that very view. Davilla tells us, that in an interview and semblance of treaty with the king of Navar, Catharine of Medicis broke the prince's power more with the insidious gaieties of her court, than many battles before had done. But there is a single passage in Herodotus, which will supply the place of more quotations. "When Cyrus had received an account that the Lydians had revolted from him, he told Crœsus, with a good deal of emotion, that he had almost determined to make them all slaves. Croesus begged him to pardon them; but, says he, that they may no more rebel, or be troublesome to you, command them to lay aside their arms, to wear long vests and buskins. Order them to sing and play on the harp; to drink and debauch; and you will soon see their spirits broken, and themselves changed from men into women; so that they will no more rebel, or be uneasy to you for the future." And the event answered the advice. They are puny politicians, who attack a people's liberty directly. The means are dangerous, and the success precarious. Notions of liberty are interwoven with our very being; and the least suspicion of its being in danger fires the soul with a generous indignation. But he is the statesman formed for ruin and

* Plut. in Peric., and Demost. Orat.

Herod. lib. 1, cap. 155.

Tac. An. lib. 2, cap. 33.