at present to own its parents, I can remember its whisper-hood. To conclude the nativity of this monster; when it comes into the world without a fting, it is ftillborn; and whenever it lofes its fting, it dies.

No wonder if an infant fo miraculous in its birth fhould be deftined for great adventures; and accordingly we fee it hath been the guardian Spirit of a prevailing party for almoft twenty years. It can conquer kingdoms without fighting, and fometimes with the lofs of a battle. It gives and refumes employments; can fink a mountain to a mole-hill, and raise a mole-hill to a mountain; hath prefided for many years at committees of elections; can wafh a black-a-moor white; make a faint of an atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign minifters with intelligence; and raise or let fall the credit of the nation. This goddefs flies with a huge looking-glafs in her hands to dazzle the croud, and make them fee, according as fhe turns it, their ruin in their intereft, and their intereft in their ruin. In this glass you will behold your best friends clad

in

in coats powdered with fleurs de lis and triple crowns, their girdles hung round with chain, and beads, and wooden fhoes; and your worst enemies adorned with the enfigns of liberty, property, indulgence, moderation, and a cornucopia in their hands. Her large wings, like those of a flying fish, are of no use but while they are moist; fhe therefore dips them in mud, and foaring aloft scatters it in the eyes of the multitude, flying with great fwiftnefs; but at every turn is forced to stoop in dirty ways for new supplies.

I have been fometimes thinking, if a man had the art of the second fight for seeing lyes, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how admirably he might entertain himself in this town by obferving the different fhapes, fizes, and colours of those fwarms of lyes, which buz about the heads of fome people, like flies about a horse's ears in fummer; or those legions hovering every afternoon in Exchange-alley, enough to darken the air; or over a club of difcontented grandees, and thence fent down in cargoes to be scattered at elections.

There

There is one effential point wherein a political lyar differs from others of the faculty; that he ought to have but a short memory, which is neceffary according to the various occafions he meets with every hour of differing from himself, and swearing to both fides of a contradiction, as he finds the perfons difpofed, with whom he hath to deal. In defcribing the virtues and vices of mankind it is convenient, upon every article, to have fome eminent perfon in our eye, from whom we copy our description. I have ftrictly obferved this rule; and my imagination this minute represents before me a certain great man famous for this talent, to the conftant practice of which he owes his twenty years reputation of the most skilful head in England for the management of nice affairs. The fuperiority of his genius confifts in nothing else, but an inexhauftible fund of political lyes, which he plentifully distributes every minute he speaks, and by an unparallelled generofity forgets, and confequently contradicts, the next half hour.

*

He

He never yet confidered, whether any propofition were true or falfe, but whether it were convenient for the prefent minute or company to affirm or deny it; fo that if you think fit to refine upon him, by interpreting every thing he fays, as we do dreams, by the contrary, you are ftill to feek, and will find yourfelf equally deceived whether you believe or no: the only remedy is to fuppofe, that you have heard fome inarticulate founds without any meaning at all; and befides, that will take off the horror you might be apt to conceive at the oaths, wherewith he perpetually tags both ends of every propofition; although at the fame time, I think, he cannot with any juftice be taxed with perjury, when he invokes God and Chrift; because he hath often fairly given publick notice to the world, that he believes in neither.

Some people may think, that fuch an accomplishment as this can be of no great ufe to the owner, or his party, after it hath been often practifed and is become notorious; but they are widely mistaken. Few lyes carry the inventor's mark, and

the

the most prostitute enemy to truth may fpread a thoufand without being known for the author: befides, as the vileft writer hath his readers, fo the greateft lyar hath his believers and it often happens, that if a lye be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work, and there is no farther occafion for it. Falfhood flies, and truth comes limping after it; fo that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jeft is over, and the tale has had its effect: like a man, who has thought of a good repartee, when the difcourfe is changed, or the company parted; or like a phyfician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.

Confidering that natural difpofition in many men to lye, and in multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim fo frequent in every body's mouth; that truth will at last prevail. Here hath this ifland of ours, for the greatest part of twenty years, lain under the influence of fuch counfels and perfons, whofe principle and intereft it was to corrupt our manners, blind our understanding, drain our wealth, and in time destroy C 2

our