174 Anecdotes.
��1 Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent whigs of the last age, the devil x had, not with any great impropriety, consented to appear ; he would perhaps in somewhat like these words have commenced the con versation :
' You seem, my Lord, to be concerned at the judicious appre hension, that while you are sapping the foundations of royalty at home, and propagating here the dangerous doctrine of resis tance ; the distance of America may secure its inhabitants from your arts, though active: but I will unfold to you the gay prospects of futurity. This people, now so innocent and harmless, shall draw the sword against their mother country, and bathe its point in the blood of their benefactors ; this people, now contented with a little, shall then refuse to spare what they themselves confess they could not miss 2 ; and these men, now so honest and so grateful, shall, in return for peace and for protection, see 3 their vile agents in the house of par liament, there to sow the seeds of sedition, and propagate confusion, perplexity, and pain. Be not dispirited then at the contemplation of their present happy state : I promise you that anarchy, poverty, and death shall, by my care, be carried even
For instance, my Lord Bathurst couth manners ; yet shall, before you
might remember all the stages of the taste of death, show itself equal to
progress. . . . Suppose, Sir, that the the whole of that commerce which
angel of this auspicious youth . . . now attracts the envy of the world," '
If amidst these bright and happy &c. Payne's Burke, i. 172.
scenes of domestic honour and pros- W. W. Pepys wrote to Hannah
perity, that angel should have drawn More : ( I once heard a man say of
up the curtain and unfolded the Burke, while he was pouring forth
rising glories of his country, and, torrents of eloquence in the House of
whilst he was gazing with admiration Commons, " How closely that fellow
on the then commercial grandeur of reasons in metaphor ! " ' M ore's
England, the Genius should point Memoirs, iii. 377.
out to him a' little speck scarcely x ' I have always said the first
visible in the mass of the national Whig was the Devil.' Life, iii. 326.
interest, a small seminal principle, 2 What they refused to spare was
rather than a formed body, and a contribution towards the expenses
should tell him " Young man, there of the last French war.
is America which at this day serves 3 See I have little doubt is a mis-
for little more than to amuse you print for fee. with stories of savage men and un-
across
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