or privately supporting this project, will please those by whom I expect to be preserved, or higher exalted.  Nothing then remains, but to compute and balance my gain and my loss, and sum up the whole.  I suppose that I shall keep my employment ten years, (not to mention the fair chance of a better.) This at 1500_l_. a year, amounts, in ten years, to 15,000_l_.  My estate, by the success of the said project, sinks 400_l_. a year; which at twenty years’ purchase, is but 8000_l_. so that I am a clean gainer of 7000_l_. upon the balance.  And during all that period, I am possessed of power and credit, can gratify my favourites, and take vengeance of mine enemies.  And if the project miscarry, my private merit is still entire.  This arithmetic, as horrible as it appears, I knowingly affirm to have been practised, and applied in conjunctures, whereon depended the ruin or safety of a nation:  Although, probably the charity and virtue of a senate, will hardly be induced to believe, that there can be such monsters among mankind.  And yet, the wise Lord Bacon mentions a sort of people, (I doubt the race is not yet extinct) who would “set a house on fire, for the convenience of roasting their own eggs at the flame.”

But whoever is old enough to remember, and hath turned his thoughts to observe the course of public affairs in this kingdom, from the time of the Revolution; must acknowledge, that the highest points of interest and liberty, have been often sacrificed to the avarice and ambition of particular persons, upon the very principles and arithmetic that I have supposed:  The only wonder is, how these artists were able to prevail upon numbers; and influence even public assemblies to become instruments for effecting their execrable designs.

It is, I think, in all conscience, latitude enough for vice, if a man in station be allowed to act injustice, upon the usual principles of getting a bribe, wreaking his malice, serving his party, or consulting his preferment; while his wickedness terminates in the ruin only of particular persons:  But, to deliver up our whole country, and every living soul who inhabits it, to certain destruction; hath not, as I remember, been permitted by the most favourable casuists on the side of corruption.  It were far better, that all who have had the misfortune to be born in this kingdom, should be rendered incapable of holding any employment whatsoever, above the degree of a constable, (according to the scheme and intention of a great minister[2] gone to his own place)than to live under the daily apprehension of a few false brethren among ourselves.  Because, in the former case we should be wholly free from the danger of being betrayed; since none could then have impudence enough to pretend any public good.

[Footnote 2:  The Earl of Sunderland.  See note on p. 377 of vol. v. of present edition. [T.S.]]