CHARACTERS. 



387 



nihilationof profitable places j" for 

 you do not see " why a statesman 

 who does his business well, should 

 not be paid for his labour as well 

 as any other workman." Agreed. 

 But why more than any other 

 workman? The less the salary 

 the greater the honour. In so 

 great a nation there are many 

 rich enough to afford giving their 

 time to the public ; and there are 

 1 make no doubt many wise and 

 able men who would take as much 

 pleasure in governing for nothing, 

 as they do in playing chess for 

 nothing. It would be one of the 

 noblest amusements. That this 

 opinion is not chimerical, the 

 country 1 now live in affords a 

 proof J its whole civil and criminal 

 law administration being done for 

 nothing, or in some sense for less 

 than nothing, since the members 

 of its judiciary parliaments buy 

 their places, and do not make 

 more than three per cent, for their 

 money, by their fees and emolu- 

 ments, while the legal interest is 

 five ; so that in fact tliey give two 

 per cent to be allowed to govern, 

 and all their time and trouble into 

 the bargain. Thus profit, one 

 motive for desiring place, being 

 abolished, there remains only am- 

 bition ; and that being in some 

 degree balanced by loss, you may 

 easily conceive that there will not 

 be very violent factions and con- 

 tentions for such places ; nor much 

 of the mischief to the countiy that 

 attends your factions, which have 

 often occasioned wars, and over- 

 loaded you with debts impayable. 



1 allow you all the force of your 

 joke upon the vagrancy of our 

 congress. They have a right to 

 Bit where they please, of which 

 perhaps they hare made too much 



use by shifting too often. — But 

 they have two other rights ; those 

 of sitting when they please, and 

 as long as they please, in which 

 niethinks they have the advantage 

 of your Parliament ; for they can- 

 not be dissolved by the breath of 

 a minister, or sent packing as you 

 were the other day, when it was 

 your earnest desire to have re- 

 mained longer together. 



You " fairly acknowledge that 

 the late war terminated quite con- 

 trary to your expectation." Your 

 expectation was ill founded j for 

 you would not believe your old 

 friend, who told you repeatedly 

 that by those measures England 

 would lose her colonies, as Epic- 

 tetus warned in vain his master 

 that he would break his leg. You 

 believed rather the tales you heard 

 of our poltroonery and impotence 

 of body and mind. Do you not 

 remember the story you told me 

 of the Scotch serjeant who met 

 with a party of forty American 

 soldiers, and though alone, dii;- 

 armed them all, and brought them 

 in prisoners? a story almost as 

 improbable as that of the Irish- 

 man, who pretended to have alone 

 taken and brought in five of the 

 enemy by surrounding them. And 

 yet, my friend, sensible and judi- 

 cious as you are, but partaking of 

 the general infatuation, you seem- 

 ed to believe it. The word general 

 puts me in mind of a genejal, 

 your General Clarke, who had the 

 folly to say in my hearing at Sir 

 John Pringle's, that with a thou- 

 sand British grenadiers he would 

 undertake to go from one end of 

 America to the other, and geld all 

 the males, partly by force and 

 partly by a little coaxing. It is 

 plain he took us for a species of 



2 C 2 animals 



