Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 11.djvu/185

that Mr. secretary St. John refused to sit if the duke was there. Last Sunday the duke was there again, but did not offer to come to the cabinet, which was held without him. I hear the duke was advised by his friends of the other party to take this step. The secretary said to some of his acquaintance, that he would not sit with a man who had so often betrayed them, &c. You know the duchess of Somerset is a great favourite, and has got the duchess of Marlborough's key. She is insinuating, and a woman of intrigue; and will, I believe, do what ill offices she can to the secretary. They would have hindered her coming in; but the queen said, if it were so that she could not have what servants she liked, she did not find how her condition was mended. I take the safety of the present ministry to consist in the agreement of three great men, lord keeper, lord treasurer, and Mr. secretary; and so I have often told them together between jest and earnest, and two of them separately with more seriousness. And I think they entirely love one another, as their differences are not of weight to break their union. They vary a little about their notions of a certain general (the duke of Marlborough), I will not say more at this distance. I do not see well how they can be without the secretary, who has very great abilities both for the cabinet and parliament. The tories in the city are a little discontented, that no farther changes are made in employments, of which I cannot learn the secret, although I have heard several, and from such who might tell the true one if they would: one is, that lord treasurer professes he is at a loss to find persons qualified for several places: another (which is less believed) that the queen interposes: a third, that it

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