confequences of things, by which all difficulties fly before him; a firm friend, and a placable enemy; facrificing his justest refentments, not only to publick good, but to common interceffion and acknowledgment. Yet with all these virtues, it must be granted, there is fome mixture of human infirmity. His greateft admirers muft confefs his fkill at cards and dice to be very low and fuperficial; in horfe-racing he is utterly ignorant; then to fave a few millions to the publick, he never regards how many worthy citizens he hinders from making up their plumb. And furely there is one thing never to be forgiven him; that he delights to have his table filled with black coats, whom he ufeth as if they were gentlemen.

My lord Dartmouth is a man of letters, full of good fenfe, good nature, and honour; of ftrict virtue and regularity in his life; but labours under one great defect, that he treats his clerks with more civility and good manners, than others in his ftation have done the QUEEN,

He fucceeded the earl of Sunderland as fecretary of state.

Omitting fome others, I fhall close this character of the present miniftry with that of Mr. St. John †, who from his youth applying those admirable talents of nature and improvements of art to publick bufinefs, grew eminent in court and parliament at an age, when the generality of mankind is employed in trifles and folly. It is to be lamented, that he hath not yet procured himself a bufy, important countenance; nor learned that profound part of wisdom, to be difficult of access. Befides, he hath clearly mistaken the true use of books, which he hath thumbed, and spoiled with reading, when he ought to have multiplied them on his fhelves: not like a great man of my acquaintance, who knew a book by the back better than a friend by the face; although he had never converfed with the former, and often with the latter.

Secretary of tate in the room of Mr. Henry Boyle.

NUM

Thursday, February 8, 1710.

Caput eft in omni procuratione negotii et muneris publici, ut avaritiae pellatur etiam minima fufpicio.

TH

'HERE is no vice which mankind carries to fuch wild extremes, as that of avarice. Those two, which seem to rival it in this point, are luft and ambition: but the former is checked by difficulties and diseases, destroys itself by its own purfuits, and ufually declines with old age; and the latter, requiring courage conduct and fortune in a high degree, and meeting with a thousand dangers and oppofitions, fucceeds too feldom in an age to fall under common obfervation. Or, avarice is perhaps the fame paffion with ambition; only placed in more ignoble and daftardly minds, by which the object is changed from power to money. Or it may be that one man pursues power in order to wealth; and another wealth in order to power; which laft is the fafer way, although longer M 4 about;

about; and, fuiting with every period, as well as condition of life, is more generallyfollowed.

However it be, the extremes of this paffion are certainly more frequent than of any other; and often to a degree fo abfurd and ridiculous, that if it were not for their frequency, they could hardly obtain belief. The stage, which carries other follies and vices beyond nature and probability, falls very short in the representations of avarice; nor are there any extravagancies in this kind defcribed by ancient or modern comedies, which are not out-done by an hundred instances, commonly told among ourselves,

upon

I am ready to conclude from hence, that a vice, which keeps fo firm a hold human nature, and governs it with fo unlimited a tyranny, fince it cannot wholly be eradicated, ought at least to be confined to particular objects; to thrift and penury, to private fraud and extortion, and never fuffered to prey upon the publick; and fhould certainly be rejected as the most unqualifying circumftance for any employment, where bribery and corruption can possibly enter,

If

If the mischiefs of this vice in a publick station were confined to enriching only those particular perfons employed, the evil would be more fupportable: but it is ufually quite otherwise. When a steward defrauds his lord, he must connive at the reft of the fervants, while they are following the fame practice in their several spheres: fo that in fome families you may obferve a fubornation of knaves in a link downwards to the very helper in the ftables, all cheating by concert, and with impunity. And even if this were all, perhaps the mafter could bear it without being undone ; but it fo happens, that for every fhilling the fervant gets by his iniquity, the master lofeth twenty; the perquifites of fervants being but small compofitions for fuffering fhopkeepers to bring in what bills they please. It is exactly the fame thing in a ftate: an avaricious man in office is in confederacy with the whole clan of his diftrict, or dependence; which in modern terms of art is called to live and let live; and yet their gains are the smallest part of the publick's lofs. Give a guinea to a knavish land-waiter, and he fhall connive

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