154
THE EXAMINER.
N° 32.
NUMBER XXXII.
THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1710-11.
Non est ea medicina, cum sanæ parti corporis scalpellum adhibetur, atque integræ; carnificina est ista, et crudelitas. Hi medentur reipublicæ, qui exsecant pestem aliquam, tanqnam strumam civitatis.
To apply the knife to a sound and healthy part of the body, is butchery and cruelty; not real surgery. Those are the true physicians and surgeons of a state, who cut off the pests of society, like wens from the human body.
I AM diverted from the general subject of my discourses, to reflect upon an event of a very extraordinary and suprising nature. A great minister, in high confidence with the queen, under whose management the weight of affairs at present is in a great measure supposed to lie; sitting in council, in a royal palace, with a dozen of the chief officers of the state, is stabbed at the very board in the execution of his office, by the hand of a French papist[1], then under examination for high treason; the assassin re-
- ↑ The abbe de Bourlie, who, having quitted his native country, solicited to be employed against it in several courts of Europe, and assumed the title of marquis de Guiscard. He at length obtained a commission from queen Anne, and embarked in an expedition against France, which miscarried; and his expectations being disappointed by the new ministry, he endeavoured to make his peace at home, by acting here as a spy; and commenced a treasonable correspondence: his letters were intercepted, and produced to him by Mr. Harley, at his examination.
doubles
