sh a blackamoor white; make a saint of an
atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign ministers
with intelligence, and raise or let fall the credit of the nation. This
goddess flies with a huge looking-glass in her hands, to dazzle the
crowd, and make them see, according as she turns it, their ruin in their
interest, and their interest in their ruin. In this glass you will behold
your best friends clad in coats powdered with _flower-de-luces_[5] and
triple crowns; their girdles hung round with chains, and beads, and
wooden shoes: and your worst enemies adorned with the ensigns of liberty,
property, indulgence, and moderation, and a cornucopia in their hands.
Her large wings, like those of a flying-fish, are of no use but while
they are moist; she therefore dips them in mud, and soaring aloft
scatters it in the eyes of the multitude, flying with great swiftness;
but at every turn is forced to stoop in dirty way for new supplies.

I have been sometimes thinking, if a man had the art of the second sight
for seeing lies, as they have in Scotland for seeing spirits, how
admirably he might entertain himself in this town; to observe the
different shapes, sizes, and colours, of those swarms of lies which buzz
about the heads of some people, like flies about a horse's ears in
summer: or those legions hovering every afternoon in Popes-head Alley[6],
enough to darken the air; or over a club of discontented grandees, and
thence sent down in cargoes to be scattered at elections.

There is one essential point wherein a political liar differs from others
of the faculty; that he ought to have but a short memory, which is
necessary according to the various occasions he meets with every hour, of
differing from himself, and swearing to both sides of a contradiction, as
he finds the persons disposed, with whom he has to deal. In describing
the virtues and vices of mankind, it is convenient upon every article, to
have some eminent person in our eye, from whence we copy our description.
I have strictly observed this rule; and my imagination this minute
represents before me a certain great man[7] famous for this talent, to
the constant practice of which he owes his twenty years' reputation of
the most skilful head in England, for the management of nice affairs. The
superiority of his genius consists in nothing else but an inexhaustible
fund of political lies, which he plentifully distributes every minute he
speaks, and by an u