with their fleets, and to conquer Great Britain and Ireland for the Pretender, have been very industriously propagated by those, who are already in your pay, and by me, who stand a candidate for this honor, but am hitherto a volunteer in your service. I am sorry to tell you, sir, but Heaven forbid that I should conceal so material a circumstance from your knowledge, we do not succeed. We raise a spirit, but this spirit turns against you. There are more people than ever against the Pretender; and zeal for supporting the present establishment never ran higher. But this zeal is not any longer without knowledge: it is directed to its proper object, and there is no possibility of leading it hoodwinked to serve any other purposes. Some incredulous wretches there are, who smile when we talk to them of invasions and the Pretender, and who content themselves to reply, that the machine is very seasonably introduced, and according to the rules of art. The greater number take fire, and lay this new distress, which we threaten them with, at your door; for, they say, that we disobliged Spain some years ago, to tie the emperor the more firmly to us, and that we have since that time disobliged the emperor, by affecting a closer correspondence, and greater union of councils with France than ever was known between the two nations. They send us to that excellent treatise, "The barrier treaty vindicated," to learn our true and lasting interest in foreign alliances, and there they pretend that we shall find the condemnation of all your measures: they lament the miserable scene, which they apprehend may soon be opened, his majesty's foreign dominions exposed to all the calamities of war, and perhaps in danger of being lost; we ourselves struggling against domestic enemies, and defending our coasts against invasions: these mischiefs brought upon us by a conjunction of the emperor, our old ally, with the king of Spain his rival; a conjunction so unnatural, that nothing but the highest resentment at our behaviour to them both could have brought it about: in short, to finish up the picture, Great Britain reduced in this distress to lean solely upon France, and the faith of that court to become our chief security. Upon the whole matter, your enemies, sir, the substance of whose private conversation I have now honestly reported to you, conclude very insolently that you have filled up the measure of your iniquity and your folly, and that you must sink, or the nation must sink under the weight of that calamity which you have brought and suffered to be brought upon her. As shocking as this account must be to your ears, I promise myself that the sincerity and plainness with which I have given it, will be agreeable to you; and that you will receive into your bosom a man whose affection for your person and zeal for your service, must be above all suspicion, after giving you intelligence of so high a nature, without any stipulation for the discovery. I expect to hear from you in eight days from the date hereof; if I do not, you shall hear again from him who is, Most noble Sir, your honor's most devoted servant, From my Garrot, Jan. 1726-7. 18* THE OCCASIONAL WRITER. NUMBER II. TO THE SAME. MOST NOBLE SIR: I THINK myself obliged in honor to let the world know, that you have treated all my proposals to write in your service with a contempt unusual from one in your station; for I have seen the times when every little paltry prostitute of his pen found countenance and encouragement. These wretches are sure of both, whenever there are any bad measures to be justified, or any bold strokes to be given; and the croaking of these ravens has always, in my imagination, boded some mischief or other to the commonwealth. For this reason I took upon me the character of a most infamous libeller in my first address to you, that I might be able to make a surer judgment of our present condition, and know better what expectations to entertain; so that I own I am most agreeably disappointed in not receiving any letter or message from you. I own, that instead of biting you, I am fairly bit myself. Some malicious refiners may pretend, perhaps, that an address of such a nature made in so public a manner, could meet with no other treatment, even from a minister who was willing to accept the proposal. Malice, I say, may refine thus, and endeavor to depreciate a virtuous action, which cannot be denied, by supposing such motives to it as cannot be proved. The practice is too common, and especially where men are divided into parties, where public disputes create and nourish private animosities, and where perpetual feuds irritate the natural malignity of the heart. But far be it from me to judge with so little charity; I am willing to believe, sir, that you declined the offers made you, not on account of the public address, by which they were conveyed, but because you disdained to support a virtuous administration by a venal pen. When I meet a man with loaded pistols in his pocket, or a dagger under his cloak, I suspect that he is going upon no very honorable designs. Housebreakers and coiners have been detected, by having their tools found about them. Informers, spies, and hireling scribblers are the tools of an evil statesman; and when I see all such discouraged, and none of them about a minister, I think myself obliged to suppose that his designs are honorable, and his measures directed to the public good. I take this opportunity therefore of begging your pardon for the trial I presumed to make. The liberty indeed was great; but since it has turned so vastly to your honor, I hope to be the more easily forgiven. Shall I own it, sir? my hopes go still farther; you disdained me under the feigned character which I assumed; from the same principle of honor, from the same consciousness of merit, you will, nay, you must afford me some share of your esteem, when I appear, as I intend to do for the future, under my own. These papers shall breathe nothing but zeal to promote the honor of his majesty, the security of our present happy establishment, and in one word, the good of our country. The same spirit, which animates you and me, shall animate them: and I cannot doubt of your approbation, when I co-operate with you to these purposes; which were certainly the sole inducements you had to enter into business; as it is manifest that you continue at the head of affairs for no other reasons. The truth is, however, (for I think it becoming a friendship, which is likely to grow as intimate as ours, that I should disguise nothing from you) two things have lately happened, which gave some little shock to my good opinion of you. The first is an unwillingness you manifested, that the true state of the national debts should be known by the nation; and the severe censure you passed on such persons, as were desirous to give their countrymen a fair account of their condition in a part so essential, that our being a nation, or not a nation depends almost entirely, in this crisis, on our running or not running farther into debt. The other is the publication of a pamphlet supposed to be written by your direction, which is evidently designed to keep us no less in the dark as to all our affairs abroad. As to the first, that matter has been taken up already; and will, I doubt not, in all places, and in all manners, be so thoroughly sifted, that we shall no longer be at a loss, either as to the revenue, and the real charges upon it, or as to the whole management of it. In which examination, sir, let me advise you, as a friend, to act an ingenuous part, that suspicions may not increase, and that I may not be obliged to write to you in a style, to which I shall turn my pen with reluctance. As to the latter, I hope, it will be likewise examined; and if I was able to take such a task on myself, I should, I am persuaded, in doing so, but make a second trial of you to your glory, and knit the bands of our friendship the closer, by answering a pamphlet of so pernicious consequence, and writ with so ill a design. But I know my own unfitness to inform, to instruct, and to rouse our countrymen, some from their lethargy, and some from their golden dreams. I may toll the alarm-bell, but persons of greater strength and skill must be called upon to raise it, and to ring it out in the ears of the nation. We are grown more easy, nay more willing than ever, to be imposed upon; and we do more than half the work of those who find their account in deluding us. Almost every man considers himself as a single person; those few, who extend their considerations farther, seldom or never carry them beyond the narrow system of a family, or a party. And thus it happens, that private interest is become the criterion, by which judgments are formed upon public affairs. The man, whoever he be, who is at any time in fashion, has nothing to do but to hold out that purse, which the more he empties it, the surer he is to fill. After which let him declaim imperiously, and assert boldly, without regarding proof, or condescending to argue; let one of his tools write a pamphlet in much the same strain, and the work is done, the opinion of mankind is settled, the crowd repeats what the orator has said, and the author writ; the clamor is echoed back on all sides, and these echoes, the reverse of all others, strengthen by repetition. Thus the corrupt lead the blind, and the blind lead one another; the still voice of reason is drowned in popular clamor, and truth is overwhelmed by prejudice. This is a true account of what happens frequently; it is so far from being a description drawn from imagination, that I could give several instances, and perhaps shall have occasion to quote some, of such gross impositions on the common sense of mankind, offered in this manner, and offered with success, as no one would be bold enough to attempt putting on the weakest man in Britain in private conversation. There are, therefore, God knows, but too many reasons for him to despond, who entertains a thought of prevailing on the generality of people, to lay aside their prejudices, to check their passions, and to consider the state of the nation in a due extent, and in a true light; and yet such is our condition, such a crisis are we in, that if we do not take and execute this resolution now, it may very probably be out of our power to do it hereafter to any good purpose. In our senate we hear of great dangers, which we have to apprehend from abroad; and if we believe what is said in a |