hat an administration was to be
known and judged by the talents of those who appeared their advocates in
print. This I must never allow to be a general rule; yet I cannot but
think it prodigiously unfortunate, that, among the answerers, defenders,
repliers, and panegyrists, started up in defence of present persons and
proceedings, there hath not yet arisen one whose labours we can read
with patience, however we may applaud their loyalty and good will. And
all this with the advantages of constant ready pay, of natural and
acquired venom, and a grant of the whole fund of slander, to range over
and riot in as they please.[201]

On the other side, a turbulent writer of Occasional Letters, and other
vexatious papers, in conjunction perhaps with one or two friends as bad
as himself, is able to disconcert, tease, and sour us whenever he
thinks fit, merely by the strength of genius and truth; and after so
dexterous a manner, that, when we are vexed to the soul, and well know
the reasons why we are so, we are ashamed to own the first, and cannot
tell how to express the other. In a word, it seems to me that all the
writers are on one side, and all the railers on the other.

However, I do not pretend to assert, that it is impossible for an ill
minister to find men of wit who may be drawn, by a very valuable
consideration, to undertake his defence; but the misfortune is, that the
heads of such writers rebel against their hearts; their genius forsakes
them, when they would offer to prostitute it to the service of
injustice, corruption, party rage, and false representations of things
and persons.

And this is the best argument I can offer in defence of great men, who
have been of late so very unhappy in the choice of their
paper-champions; although I cannot much commend their good husbandry, in
those exorbitant payments of twenty and sixty guineas at a time for a
scurvy pamphlet; since the sort of work they require is what will all
come within the talents of any one who hath enjoyed the happiness of a
very bad education, hath kept the vilest company, is endowed with a
servile spirit, is master of an empty purse, and a heart full of malice.

But, to speak the truth in soberness; it should seem a little hard,
since the old Whiggish principle hath been recalled of standing up for
the liberty of the press, to a degree that no man, for several years
past, durst venture out a thought which did not square to a point with
the maxims and