the point, and by that course there is likely to be the
minimum of mendacity for you, perhaps the direct money-method is a shade
less damnable than any of the others since discovered;--while, in
regard to practical damage resulting, it is of childlike harmlessness in
comparison!

"That was Walpole's method; with this to aid his great natural faculty,
long-headed, deep-bellied, suitable to the English Parliament and
Nation, he went along with perfect success for ten or twenty years. And
it might have been for longer,--had not the English Nation accidentally
come to wish, that it should CEASE jumbling NO-whither; and try to
jumble SOME-whither, at least for a little while, on important business
that had risen for England in a certain quarter. Had it not been for
Jenkins's Ear blazing out in the dark English brain, Walpole might have
lasted still a long while. But his fate lay there:--the first Business
vital to England which might turn up; and this chanced to be the Spanish
War. How vital, readers shall see anon. Walpole, knowing well enough in
what state his War-apparatus was, and that of all his Apparatuses there
was none in a working state, but the Parliamentary one,--resisted
the Spanish War; stood in the door against it, with a rhinoceros
determination, nay almost something of a mastiff's; resolute not to
admit it, to admit death as soon. Doubtless he had a feeling it would
be death, the sagacious man;--and such it is now proving; the Walpole
Ministry dying by inches from it; dying hard, but irremediably.

"The English Nation was immensely astonished, which Walpole was not, any
more than at the other Laws of Nature, to find Walpole's War-apparatus
in such a condition. All his Apparatuses, Walpole guesses, are in
no better, if it be not the Parliamentary one. The English Nation is
immensely astonished, which Walpole again is not, to find that his
Parliamentary Apparatus has been kept in gear and smooth-going by the
use of OIL: 'Miraculous Scandal of Scandals!' thinks the English Nation.
'Miracle? Law of Nature, you fools!' thinks Walpole. And in fact there
is such a storm roaring in England, in those and in the late and the
coming months, as threatens to be dangerous to high roofs,--dangerous
to Walpole's head at one time. Storm such as had not been witnessed in
men's memory; all manner of Counties and Constituencies, with solemn
indignation, charging their representatives to search into that
miraculous Scandal of S