To corrupt and to divide are the trite and wicked expedients, by which some ministers in all ages have affected to govern; but especially such as have been least capable of exerting the true arts of government. There is however a difference to be made between these two expedients, to the advantage of the latter, and by consequence between the characters of those who put them in practice.

Every busy, ambitious child of fortune, who hath himself a corrupt heart, and becomes master of a large purse, hath all that is necessary to employ the expedient of corruption with success.

A bribe, in the hand of the most blundering coxcomb that ever disgraced honour and wealth and power, will prevail as much as in the hand of a man of sense, and go farther too, if it weigh more. An intriguing chambermaid may slip a bank note into a griping paw, as well as the most subtle dæmon of hell. H**e may govern as triumphantly by this expedient as the great knight his brother, and the great knight as Burleigh himself.

But every character cannot attempt the other expedient of dividing, or keeping up divisions, with equal success. There is, indeed, no occa sion for any extraordinary genius to divide; and true wisdom despises the infamous task. But there is need of that left-handed wisdom, called cunning, and of those habits in business, called experience. He that is corrupted cooperates with him that corrupts. He runs into his arms at the first beckon; or, in order sometimes to raise the price, he meets him but half way. On the other hand, to divide, or to maintain and renew the divisions of parties in a state, a system of seduction and fraud is necessary to be carried on. The divided are so far from being accessory to the guilt, that they would not be divided, if they were not first deceived.

From these differences, which I have observed between the two expedients, and the characters and means proper to put them in practice with success, it may be discovered perhaps why, upon former occasions, as I shall hereafter show, the expedient of dividing prospered so much better than that of corrupting; and why, upon some later occasions, the expedient of corrupting succeeds so well in those hands, which, are not, and, I trust, will not be so lucky in maintaining or renewing our party divisions.

Much hath been written by you, Mr. D'Anvers, by your correspondents, and others who have drawn their pens in the cause of truth, virtue, and liberty, against the right reverend, as well as undignified,

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undignified, the noble, as well as ignoble assertors of corruption; enough surely to shame those, who have not lost all sense of shame, out of so ignominious a crime; and to make those, who have not lost every other sense, tremble at the consequences of it. We may flatter ourselves, that these honest endeavours have had some effect; and have reason to hope, that far greater will follow from those illustrious examples of repulses, which have been lately given to the grand corrupter, notwithstanding his frequent and insolent declarations, that he could seduce whomsoever he had a mind to gain. These hopes are farther confirmed to us by repeated declarations of the sense of parliament, and will be turned, we doubt not, into certainty, whenever the wisdom of the two houses shall again think it proper to raise new barriers of law against this encroaching vice.

In the mean time, I think nothing can better answer the designs of your papers, nor promote the publick good more effectually in the present conjuncture, than to put our countrymen frequently on their guard against the artifice, which is clumsily, but industriously employed to maintain, and, if it be possible, to create new divisions among them. That day, which our fathers wished to see, and did not see, is now breaking upon us. Shall we suffer this light to be turned again into party-darkness by the incantations of those, who would not have passed for conjurers, even in the days of superstition and ignorance ? The nation is not only brought into a uniformity

of opinion concerning the present administration by the length and the righteous conduct of it; but we are grown into a unanimity about principles of government, which the most sanguine could scarce have expected without extravagance. Certain associations of ideas were made so familiar to us, about half a century ago, and became in the course of time so habitual, that we should not have been able, even a few years ago, to break them; nor have been easily induced to believe, on the faith of any prediction, that experience and the evidence of facts would, in a few years more, break them for us, destroy all our notions of party, and substitute new ones in their room.

The power and majesty of the people, an original contract, the authority and independency of parliament, liberty, resistance, exclusion, abdication, deposition; these were ideas associated, at that time, to the idea of a whig, and supposed by every whig to be incommunicable and inconsistent with the idea of a tory.

Divine, hereditary, indefeasible right, lineal succession, passive obedience, prerogative, nonresistance, slavery, nay, and sometimes popery too, were associated in many minds to the idea of a tory; and deemed incommunicable and inconsistent, in the same manner, with the idea of a whig.

• But now that which neither side would have believed on the faith of any prediction, is come to pass;

quod divûm promittere nemo Auderet, volvenda dies, en! attulit ultro.

These

These associations are broken; these distinct sets of ideas are shuffled out of their order; new combinations force themselves upon us, and it would actually be as absurd to impute to the tories the principles, which were laid to their charge for merly, as it would be to ascribe to the projector and his faction the name of whigs, while they daily forfeit that character by their actions. The bulk of both parties are really united; united on principles of liberty, in opposition to an obscure remnant of one party, who disown those principles, and a mercenary detachment from the other, who betray them.

How this change for the better comes to have been wrought in an age, when most things have changed for the worse; and since it hath been wrought, why the old distinctions are kept up in some measure, will I think be accounted for in treating this subject farther. At present, what shall we say to those who publickly speak of this national union as impracticable and chimerical; yet privately act against it, with all their might, as a practicable thing, and a real evil to them? If it be as complete and as well cemented, as I imagine it is, and as every honest Briton wishes it may be; nay, if there be nothing more than a strong tendency on all sides towards it, which no man of the least observation and candour will deny; it is surely the duty of every one, who desires the prosperity of his country, to seize the opportunity, to cultivate and improve it. If men are to be known by their works, the works of those, who oppose this union,

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