XXV. With respect to inferior ministers, such for example, as the principal people and magistrates in the provinces, I have had a great deal of experience, and protest, that for the most part, I have found them to be the best sort of men to be met with in the country. I say for the most part, for it cannot be denied, that among this class, there are men to be found that are not very upright, and more than a little addicted to avarice. And by what I find the principal directors, lawyers, and magistrates in the country to be, I judge of those about the court; and it seems natural to me, that the higher the sphere of life is in which people move, they are the more stimulated by motives of honour, and less likely to descend to, or be guilty of mean actions. SECT. V. XXVI. Neither do I believe above half that is said, of the neglect that is shewn to merit, and the abandoned situation it finds itself in at court; for the number of candidates for preferment that may be found there, who have no merit at all, would upon enquiry appear to be very considerable, and that among them, you will meet with mischief-makers, together with crafty, deceitful, and treacherous people, whose bad practices and characters, it is almost beyond the power of language to describe; who are a sort of imps of Satan, that for the most part serve the Devil without pay; and are a kind of galley slaves upon earth, who join to that slavery, being the galley boatswains mates, or drivers of each other, whose oar, and whose scourge, are never out of their hands, for fear of their not being the first to arrive at the desired port, and to accomplish what they had in view. They are a species of idolaters of Fortune, who sacrifice as victims to that deity, their companions, their relations, their friends, and their benefactors; and in the end themselves also, or their own souls. What have we not to expect, or what have we not to fear from men of this character?