Nothing could be more contrary to the wishes and principles of Dr. Beaumont, than this connexion. The Queen's retinue was composed of that refuse of the old court, who not having talents for an active situation, nor virtue enough to make them sensible of the baseness of impoverishing dependence, continued to hang like leeches on the exhausted frame of Royalty, and to drain its decayed resources for their own support. While the King and his counsel were debating how to equip an army without money or credit; while the great and the good were disarraying their noble mansions, parting with every moveable, mortgaging their lands, and alienating even the treasured heir-looms which had for centuries attested their high descent, to support their falling Sovereign; the courtiers, who surrounded the Queen, were engaging their mistress to forward their intrigues for places and titles, and inticing her to pervert the scanty resources of the public treasury to feed their rapacity. Thus, when, after a painful summer spent in martial toils and dangerous conflicts, the King came to his winter-quarters, he found the fatigues of his public duties aggravated by those private cabals which were ever at work to counteract the decisions of his council, and to balance the advantage of a few sycophants against a nation's weal. The faction of whom I speak were incapable of judicious conduct either in prosperity or in adversity, mistaking a few successful enterprises for the former, and thereupon becoming insolent and sanguine, talking of unconditional submission from the rebels, and an intire reinstatement of themselves in the luxurious ease of their former sinecures; yet as easily discouraged by a few adverse events; without resources, without firmness; actuated by the evil spirit of selfishness which forbids any good or noble determination to enter the impure heart, that submits to its influence.