The pamphleteers whom he opposed, and who opposed him, were powerless against Swift. Where they pried with the curiosity and meanness of petty dealers, Swift's insight seized on the larger relations, and insisted on them. Where they "bantered," cajoled, and sneered, arousing a very mild irritation, Swift's scornful invective, and biting satire silenced into fear the enemies of the Queen's chosen ministers. Where their jejune "answers" gained a simper, Swift's virility of mind, range of power, and dexterity of handling, compelled a homage. His Whig antagonists had good reason to dread him. He scoffed at them for an existence that was founded, not on a devotion to principles, but on a jealousy for the power others enjoyed. "The bulk of the Whigs appears rather to be linked to a certain set of persons, than any certain set of principles." To these persons also he directed his grim attention, Somers, Cowper, Godolphin, Marlborough, and Wharton were each drawn with iron stylus and acid. To Wharton he gave special care (he had some private scores to pay off), and in the character of Verres, he etched the portrait of a profligate, an unscrupulous governor, a scoundrel, an infidel to his religion and country, a reckless, selfish, low-living blackguard. In the Letter to Marcus Crassus, Marlborough is addressed in language that the simplest farm-labourer could understand. The letter is a lay sermon on the vice of avarice, and every point and illustration are taken from Marlborough's life with such telling application that Marlborough himself must have taken thought as he read it. "No man," Swift finely concludes, "of true valour and true understanding, upon whom this vice has stolen unawares; when he is convinced he is guilty, will suffer it to remain in his breast an hour."