With all those advantages, I cannot see why persons, in the height of power, should be under the least concern on account of their reputation, for which they have no manner of use; or to ruin that of others, which may perhaps be the only possession their enemies have left them. Supposing times of corruption, which I am very far from doing, if a writer displays them in their proper colours, does he do anything worse than sending customers to the shop? "Here only, at the sign of the Brazen Head, are to be sold places and pensions: beware of counterfeits, and take care of mistaking the door." For my own part, I think it very unnecessary to give the character of a great minister in the fulness of his power, because it is a thing that naturally does itself, and is obvious to the eyes of all mankind; for his personal qualities are all derived into the most minute parts of his administration. If this be just, prudent, regular, impartial, intent upon the public good, prepared for present exigencies, and provident of the future; such is the director himself in his private capacity: If it be rapacious, insolent, partial, palliating long and deep diseases of the public with empirical remedies, false, disguised, impudent, malicious, revengeful; you shall infallibly find the private life of the conductor to answer in every point; nay, what is more, every twinge of the gout or gravel will be felt in their consequences by the community. As the thief-catcher, upon viewing a house broke open, could immediately distinguish, from the manner of the workmanship, by what hand it was done. It is hard to form a maxim against which an exception is not ready to start up: So, in the present case, where the minister grows enormously rich, the public is proportionably poor; as, in a private family, the steward always thrives the fastest when his lord is running out. * * * * * * * * * * AN ACCOUNT OF THE COURT AND EMPIRE OF JAPAN.[202] Regoge[203] was the thirty-fourth emperor of Japan, and began his reign in the year 341 of the Christian era, succeeding to Nena,[204] a princess who governed with great felicity. There had been a revolution in that empire about twenty-six years before, which made some breaches in the hereditary line; and Regoge, successor to Nena, although of the royal family, was a distant relation. There were two violent parties in the empire, which began in the time of the revolution above mentioned; and, at the death of the Empress Nena, were in the highest degree of animosity, each charging the other with a design of introducing new gods, and changing the civil constitution. The names of these two parties were Husiges and Yortes.[205] The latter were those whom Nena, the late empress, most favoured towards the end of her reign, and by whose advice she governed.