However, I must acknowledge myself indebted to them for one hint, which I shall now pursue, though in a different manner. Since the fall of the late ministry, I have seen many papers filled with their encomiums; I conceive, in imitation of those who write the lives of famous men, where, after their deaths, immediately follow their characters. When I saw the poor virtues thus dealt at random, I thought the disposers had flung their names, like valentines into a hat, to be drawn as fortune pleased, by the j[u]nto and their friends. There, Crassus[6] drew liberty and gratitude; Fulvia,[7] humility and gentleness; Clodius,[8] piety and justice; Gracchus,[9] loyalty to his prince; Cinna,[10] love of his country and constitution; and so of the rest. Or, to quit this allegory, I have often seen of late, the whole set of discarded statesmen, celebrated by their judicious hirelings, for those very qualities which their admirers owned they chiefly wanted. Did these heroes put off and lock up their virtues when they came into employment, and have they now resumed them since their dismissions? If they wore them, I am sure it was _under_ their greatness, and without ever once convincing the world of their visibility or influence. But why should not the present ministry find a pen to praise them as well as the last? This is what I shall now undertake, and it may be more impartial in me, from whom they have deserved so little. I have, _without being called_, served them half a year in quality of champion,[11] and by help of the Qu[een] and a majority of nine in ten of the kingdom, have been able to protect them against a routed cabal of hated politicians, with a dozen of scribblers at their head; yet so far have they been from rewarding me suitable to my deserts, that to this day they never so much as sent to the printer to enquire who I was; though I have known a time and a ministry, where a person of half my merit and consideration would have had fifty promises, and in the mean time a pension settled on him, whereof the _first quarter_ should be honestly paid. Therefore my resentments shall so far prevail, that in praising those who are now at the head of affairs, I shall at the same time take notice of their defects. Was any man more eminent in his profession than the present l[or]d k[eepe]r,[12] or more distinguished by his eloquence and great abilities in the House of Commons? And will not his enemies allow him to be fully equal to the great station he now adorns? But then it must be granted, that he is wholly ignorant in the speculative as well as practical part of polygamy: he knows not how to metamorphose a sober man into a lunatic:[13] he is no freethinker in religion, nor has courage to be patron of an atheistical book,[14] while he is guardian of the Qu[een]'s conscience. Though after all, to speak my private opinion, I cannot think these such mighty objections to his character, as some would pretend.