第1章 Letter I(1)

Sir:--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 chamber-maid may slip a bank-note into a griping paw,as well as the most subtle demon of hell.H--e may govern as triumphantly by this expedient as the great knight his brother,and the great knight as Burghley himself.But every character cannot attempt the other expedient of dividing,or keeping up divisions,with equal success.There is,indeed,no occasion 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,co-operates 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,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 those 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 meantime,I think nothing can better answer the design of your papers,nor promote the public 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 amongst 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 an 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,non-resistance,slavery,nay and sometimes property 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 divum promittere nemo Auderet,volvenda dies en!attulit ultro.