cause; demand of the M-h to forego all resentment against him; insist upon his being received into every appearance of the most gracious favour at court; and by a victory so decisive, over your Sn's inclinations where inclination is ever the most refractory, make sure, at the very beginning, of that ascendency by which you may afterwards compel your master to see with your eyes, and to assent implicitly to all the measures you shall propose to him. Stipulate to the right to institute process, and to set on foot enquiries, for the purpose of calumniating and degrading your predecessors,—even in cases in which it shall be infallibly clear, that their conduct has been without stain, and superior to all accusation. Stipulate, likewise, for the right impli citly to pursue those very measures which were adopted by your immediate predecessors in office; yet to pretend, in the face of the world, that your's are measures widely different; and to continue to to arraign those which were pursued be fore, as measures the silliest and most pernicious. CHAPTER IX. THE POLITICAL ADVENTURER AT THE HEAD OF AN ADMINISTRATION. THE Orator and statesman whose fit education and political progress I have traced, is now, at the height of his ambition. Without fixing what particular office he may put himself at the head of; I shall, now, consider him in the character of a FIRST MI NISTER. He and his associates come into office, at a crisis of peculiar difficulty. Much is lost; more is in imminent danger; if the nation conceive any hope upon the accession of these new men-it is derived from an opinion of their submissive indifference, as ready to make at once every sacrifice that the most ambitious enemy can require. Even in the treaty for the acceptance of official employment, time was lost which left the allies of the country in uncertainty and despair, and which thus gave to enemies cautious not to lose a single hour, the most extraordinary advantage. Spite of all this; be it your first care to divide the loaves and fishes. Let state-affairs stand still till you shall have swept out of the offices of government, high and low, every individual whose person is obnoxious to any one of your gang, or whose salary any of your dependents wishes to enjoy. Next, consider well, what proportion of your own adherents are to be immediately and fully gratified? Who of them are to be put off, for a time, with fair yet sincere promises? Who to be merely soothed with Who to be soft words, and no more? scornfully driven off at once, by insolent neglect? Gratify those only to the full, whose continued attachment is indispensably requisite to bolster up your power; and to whom you are under engagements which you dare not violate, for the particular gratifications you: give them. With these, indeed, you may almost equal the boon companions of your our private pleasures, the creatures of your mistresses and their friends,-with. perhaps. one or two who had no claim upon you, in order to get a reputation for candour and generosity. All they whose aid, active, ardent aid, is to be the support of your administration, ought to be put off with little or nothing, for the present. Impatient hope is a much more faithful prompter than gratitude. Keep your most effective servants in hope; give them as little as possible more than hope to animate their services; beware, however, of bilking their hopes, so as to provoke indig |