Addison, writing to Swift at this period, declares, after expressing his wish again to eat a dish of beans and bacon in the best company in the world, (meaning his friend,) that he is forced to give himself airs of a punctual correspondence with Swift at St. James’s coffee-house, to those friends of Swift who have a mind to pay their court to the then Irish secretary:[180] yet Swift at that very time had satirised Lord Wharton, Addison’s patron, in terms so outrageous as to meet with the reprobation of the learned and moderate Dr. King, Archbishop of Dublin. Such a paper as the “Examiner” had been, in the opinion of Swift, long required, to enlighten the public mind, and to disabuse the ignorant of those errors into which they had fallen respecting the late ministry; and, accordingly, one of its most elaborate papers is occupied in discussing the charge of ingratitude, made against the Queen and her advisers, for dismissing the Duke of Marlborough from his employments. After a long enumeration of the benefits which had been conferred on the Duke, and stating, in a manner unparalleled for ingenuity and eloquence, the unexampled rewards and privileges he had received, he follows the attack upon the Duke by another, still more insidious, on the Duchess.[181] “A lady of my acquaintance appropriated twenty-six pounds a year out of her allowance for certain uses which the lady received, or was to pay to the lady or her order, as was called for. But after eight years, it appeared upon the strictest calculation that the woman had paid but four pounds a year, and sunk two-and-twenty pounds for her own pocket; ’tis but supposing twenty-six pounds instead of twenty-six thousand, and by that you may judge what the pretensions of modern merit are, where it happens to be its own paymaster.” From this hateful insinuation the Duchess amply cleared herself, in her Justification. Doubtless Swift was indebted to the female politicians who gave him such good information, for the dark hints which he threw out in so ungallant, so dastardly a manner, couched in terms to which it would be difficult to reply. Years afterwards, when most of the actors of those days except herself were in the grave, resting alike from political turmoils, and from the disturbances of their own passions, the Duchess met the accusations brought against her, and justified her character.[182] Her arguments, succinctly detailed in her Vindication, include the following observations.