two persons, I have known one of them perpetually making large demands and pressing for payments, who when the accounts were cast up on both sides, was found to be creditor for some hundreds.  I am thinking if a proclamation were issued out for every man to send in his bill of merits, and the lowest price he set them at, what a pretty sum it would amount to, and how many such islands as this must be sold to pay them.  I form my judgment from the practice of those who sometimes happen to pay themselves, and I dare affirm, would not be so unjust to take a farthing more than they think is due to their deserts.  I will instance only in one article.  A lady of my acquaintance,[8] appropriated twenty-six pounds a year out of her allowance, for certain uses, which her woman received, and was to pay to the lady or her order, as it was called for.  But after eight years, it appeared upon the strictest calculation, that the woman had paid but four pound a year, and sunk two-and-twenty for her own pocket.  It is but supposing instead of twenty-six pound, twenty-six thousand, and by that you may judge what the pretensions of modern merit are, where it happens to be its own paymaster.

[Footnote 1:  No. 16 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  “Who are the good citizens?  Who are they who—­whether at war or at home—­deserve well of their country, but those who bear in mind the benefits she has already conferred upon them?” [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  The Earl of Sunderland and Lord Godolphin.  Sunderland was succeeded by Dartmouth, in June, as Secretary of State, and Godolphin returned his staff of treasurer in August, the office being placed in commission.  Sunderland and Godolphin were both related to Marlborough by marriage.  The former married Anne, and the son of the latter Henrietta, daughters of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  See “Memoirs relating to that Change” (Swift’s Works, vol. v., pp. 367-8). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 5:  The Queen’s Message, proposing to grant to the Duke of Marlborough the Manor of Woodstock and Hundred of Wootton, was read January 17th, 1704/5.  A Bill carrying this proposal into effect was introduced January 25th, and passed February 3rd.  Blenheim House, erected at the Queen’s expense, was settled to go with the dukedom by a Bill introduced in the House of Lords, which passed all its stages in the Commons December 20th, 1706.  The pension of L5,000 per annum upon the revenue of the Post Office, granted by the Queen for her lifetime in December, 1702—­at a time when the Commons expressed their “trouble” that they could not comply—­was made perpetual by a Bill introduced January 14th, 1706/7, passed January 18th, Royal Assent given January 28th (see “Journals of House of Commons,” xiv. and xv.). [T.S.] ]

[Footnote 6:  A broadside, printed in 1712, entitled, “The D——­e and D—–­ -s of M——­h’s Loss; being an Estimate of their former Yearly Income,” reckons the duke’s emoluments at L54,825 per annum, and those of the duchess at L7,500.  In the second edition the following paragraph is added: