were not mature.  Things were grown to such a height, that it was no longer the question, whether a person who aimed at an employment, were a Whig or a Tory, much less, whether he had merit or proper abilities for what he pretended to:  he must owe his preferment only to the favourites; and the crown was so far from nominating, that they would not allow it a negative.  This, the Qu[een] was resolved no longer to endure, and began to break into their prescription, by bestowing one or two places of consequence,[4] without consulting her ephori; after they had fixed them for others, and concluded as usually, that all their business was to signify their pleasure to her M[ajest]y.  But though the persons the Qu[een] had chosen, were such as no objection could well be raised against upon the score of party; yet the oligarchy took the alarm;[5] their sovereign authority was, it seems, called in question; they grew into anger and discontent, as if their undoubted rights were violated.  All former obligations to their sovereign now became cancelled; and they put themselves upon the foot of people, who were hardly used after the most eminent services.

I believe all men, who know any thing in politics, will agree, that a prince thus treated, by those he has most confided in, and perpetually loaded with his favours, ought to extricate himself as soon as possible; and is then only blamable in his choice of time, when he defers one minute after it is in his power; because, from the monstrous encroachments of exorbitant avarice and ambition, he cannot tell how long it may continue to be so.  And it will be found, upon enquiring into history, that most of those princes, who have been ruined by favourites, have owed their misfortune to the neglect of early remedies; deferring to struggle till they were quite sunk.

The Whigs are every day cursing the ungovernable rage, the haughty pride, and unsatiable covetousness of a certain person,[6] as the cause of their fall; and are apt to tell their thoughts, that one single removal might have set all things right.  But the interests of that single person, were found, upon experience, so complicated and woven with the rest, by love, by awe, by marriage, by alliance, that they would rather confound heaven and earth, than dissolve such an union.

I have always heard and understood, that a king of England, possessed of his people’s hearts, at the head of a free Parliament, and in full agreement with a great majority, made the true figure in the world that such a monarch ought to do, and pursued the real interest of himself and his kingdom.  Will they allow her M[ajest]y to be in those circumstances at present?  And was it not plain by the addresses sent from all parts of the island,[7] and by the visible disposition of the people, that such a Parliament would undoubtedly be chosen?  And so it proved, without the court’s using any arts to influence elections.