[Footnote 3:  The “Symposium,” 189-192. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  See “The Spectator,” No. 81 (June 2nd, 1711):  “Their patches were placed in those different situations, as party signals to distinguish friends from foes.” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5:  Matthew Prior. [T.S.]]

NUMB. 33.[1]

FROM THURSDAY MARCH 8, TO THURSDAY MARCH 15, 1710-11.[2]

Non ea est medicina, cum sanae parti corporis scalpellum adhibetur, atque integrae; carnificina est ista, et crudelitas.  Hi medentur Reipublicae qui exsecant pestem aliquam, tanquam strumam Civitatis.[3]

I am diverted from the general subject of my discourses, to reflect upon an event of a very extraordinary and surprising nature:  A great minister, in high confidence with the Queen, under whose management the weight of affairs at present is in a great measure supposed to lie; sitting in council, in a royal palace, with a dozen of the chief officers of the state, is stabbed at the very board,[4] in the execution of his office, by the hand of a French Papist, then under examination for high treason.  The assassin redoubles his blow, to make sure work; and concluding the chancellor was dispatched, goes on with the same rage to murder a principal secretary of state:  and that whole noble assembly are forced to rise, and draw their swords in their own defence, as if a wild beast had been let loose among them.

This fact hath some circumstances of aggravation not to be paralleled by any of the like kind we meet with in history.  Caesar’s murder being performed in the Senate, comes nearest to the case; but that was an affair concerted by great numbers of the chief senators, who were likewise the actors in it, and not the work of a vile, single ruffian.  Harry the Third of France was stabbed by an enthusiastic friar,[5] whom he suffered to approach his person, while those who attended him stood at some distance.  His successor met the same fate in a coach, where neither he nor his nobles, in such a confinement, were able to defend themselves.  In our own country we have, I think, but one instance of this sort, which has made any noise, I mean that of Felton, about fourscore years ago:  but he took the opportunity to stab the Duke of Buckingham in passing through a dark lobby, from one room to another:[6] The blow was neither seen nor heard, and the murderer might have escaped, if his own concern and horror, as it is usual in such cases, had not betrayed him.  Besides, that act of Felton will admit of some extenuation, from the motives he is said to have had:  but this attempt of Guiscard seems to have outdone them all in every heightening circumstance, except the difference of persons between a king and a great minister:  for I give no allowance at all to the difference of success (which however is yet uncertain and depending) nor think it the least alleviation to the crime, whatever it may be to the punishment.