of Europe; but driven out every where, she began to lose esteem, and her daughter’s faults were imputed to herself.  So that at this time, she has hardly a place in the world to retire to.  One would wonder what strange qualities this daughter must possess, sufficient to blast the influence of so divine a mother, and the rest of her children:  She always affected to keep mean and scandalous company; valuing nobody, but just as they agreed with her in every capricious opinion she thought fit to take up; and rigorously exacting compliance, though she changed her sentiments ever so often.  Her great employment was to breed discord among friends and relations, and make up monstrous alliances between those whose dispositions least resembled each other.  Whoever offered to contradict her, though in the most insignificant trifle, she would be sure to distinguish by some ignominious appellation, and allow them to have neither honour, wit, beauty, learning, honesty or common sense.  She intruded into all companies at the most unseasonable times, mixed at balls, assemblies, and other parties of pleasure; haunted every coffee-house and bookseller’s shop, and by her perpetual talking filled all places with disturbance and confusion.  She buzzed about the merchant in the Exchange, the divine in his pulpit, and the shopkeeper behind his counter.  Above all, she frequented public assemblies, where she sat in the shape of an obscene, ominous bird, ready to prompt her friends as they spoke.”

If I understand this fable of Faction right, it ought to be applied to those who set themselves up against the true interest and constitution of their country; which I wish the undertakers for the late m[inistr]y would please to take notice of; or tell us by what figure of speech they pretend to call so great and unforced a majority, with the Qu[een] at the head, by the name of “the Faction”:  which is unlike the phrase of the Nonjurors, who dignifying one or two deprived bishops, and half a score clergymen of the same stamp, with the title of the “Church of England,” exclude all the rest as schismatics; or like the Presbyterians, laying the same accusation, with equal justice, against the established religion.

And here it may be worth inquiring what are the true characteristics of a faction, or how it is to be distinguished from that great body of the people who are friends to the constitution?  The heads of a faction, are usually a set of upstarts, or men ruined in their fortunes, whom some great change in a government, did at first, out of their obscurity produce upon the stage.  They associate themselves with those who dislike the old establishment, religious and civil.  They are full of new schemes in politics and divinity; they have an incurable hatred against the old nobility, and strengthen their party by dependants raised from the lowest of the people; they have several ways of working themselves into power; but they are sure to be called when a corrupt administration wants to be