How many great families do we all know, whose masters have passed for persons of good abilities, during the whole course of their lives, and yet the greatest part of whose estates have sunk in the hands of their stewards and receivers; their revenues paid them in scanty portions, at large discount, and treble interest, though they did not know it; while the tenants were daily racked, and at the same time accused to their landlords of insolvency. Of this species are such managers, who, like honest Peter Waters, pretend to clear an estate, keep the owner penniless, and, after seven years, leave him five times more in debt, while they sink half a plum into their own pockets. Those who think themselves concerned, may give you thanks for that gracious liberty you are pleased to allow them of "taking vengeance on the ministers, and there shooting their envenomed arrows." As to myself; I neither owe you vengeance, nor make use of such weapons: but it is your weakness, or ill fortune, or perhaps the fault of your constitution, to convert wholesome remedies into poison; for you have received better and more frequent instructions than any minister of your age and country, if God had given you the grace to apply them. I dare promise you the thanks of half the kingdom, if you will please to perform the promise you have made of suffering the _Craftsman_ and company, or whatever other "infamous wretches and execrable villains" you mean, to take their vengeance only on your own sacred ministerial person, without bringing any of your brethren, much less the most remote branch of the Royal Family, into the debate. This generous offer I suspected from the first; because there were never heard of so many, so unnecessary, and so severe prosecutions as you have promoted during your ministry, in a kingdom where the liberty of the press is so much pretended to be allowed. But in reading a page or two, I found you thought it proper to explain away your grant; for there you tell us, that "these miscreants" (meaning the writers against you) "are to remember that the laws have ABUNDANTLY LESS generous, less mild and merciful sentiments" than yourself, and into their secular hands the poor authors must be delivered to fines, prisons, pillories, whippings, and the gallows. Thus your promise of impunity, which began somewhat jesuitically, concludes with the mercy of a Spanish inquisitor.