We have at last finished the Merchants’ petition, under the conduct of the Lord Mayor and Mr. Leonidas;(489) the greatest coxcomb and the greatest oaf that ever met in blank verse or prose.  I told you the former’s question about the copy of a letter taken after the original was lost.  They have got a new story of him; that hearing of a gentleman who had had the small-pox twice and died of it, he asked, if he died the first time or the second-if this is made for him, it is at least quite in his style.  After summing up the evidence (in doing which, Mr. Glover literally drank several times to the Lord Mayor in a glass of water that stood by him,) Sir John Barnard moved to vote, that there had been great neglect in the protection of the trade, to the great advantage of’ the enemy, and the dishonour of the nation.  He said he did not mean to charge the Admiralty particularly, for then particular persons must have had particular days assigned to be heard in their own defence, which would take up too much time, as we are now going to make inquiries of a much higher nature.  Mr. Pelham was for leaving out the last words.  Mr. Doddington rose, and in a set speech declared that the motion was levelled at a particular person, who had so usurped all authority, that all inferior offices were obliged to submit to his will, and so either bend and bow, or be broken:  but that he hoped the steps we were now going to take, would make the office of first minister so dangerous a post, that nobody would care to accept it for the future.  Do but think of this fellow, who has so lost all character, and made himself so odious to both King, and Prince, by his alternate flatteries, changes, oppositions, and changes of flatteries and oppositions, that he can never expect what he has so much courted by all methods,-think of his talking of making it dangerous for any one else to accept the first ministership!  Should such a period ever arrive, he would accept it with joy-the only chance he can ever have for it!  But sure, never was impudence more put to shame!  The whole debate turned upon him.  Lord Doneraile (490) (who, by the way, has produced blossoms of Doddington like fruit, and consequently is the fitter scourge for him) stood up and said, he did not know what that gentleman meant; that he himself was as willing to bring all offenders to justice as any man; but that he did not intend to confine punishment to those who had been employed only at the end of the last ministry, but proposed to extend it to all who had been engaged in it, and wished that that gentleman would speak with more lenity of an administration, in which he himself had been concerned for so many years.  Winnington said, he did not know what Mr. Doddington had meant, by either bending or being broken; that he knew some who had been broken, though they had bowed an bended.  Waller defended Doddington, and said, if he was gilty, at least Mr. Winnington was so too; on which Fox rose up, and, laying his