the two cases, because there was
no comparison between the relative danger of Oxford and Bolingbroke.
Oxford, as their subsequent impeachment proved, was far more numerously
and powerfully supported than his illustrious enemy: and there is really
no earthly cause for doubting the truth of Bolingbroke's assertion;
namely, that "He had received repeated and certain information that a
resolution was taken, by those who had power to execute it, to pursue
him to the scaffold." There are certain situations in which a brave
and a good man should willingly surrender life--but I humbly opine that
there may sometimes exist a situation in which he should preserve
it; and if ever man was placed in that latter situation, it was Lord
Bolingbroke. To choose unnecessarily to put one's head under the axe,
without benefiting any but one's enemies by the act, is, in my eyes,
the proof of a fool, not a hero; and to attack a man for not placing his
head in that agreeable and most useful predicament--for preferring, in
short, to live for a world, rather than to perish by a faction--appears
to be a mode of arguing that has a wonderful resemblance to nonsense.
When Lord Bolingbroke was impeached, two men only out of those numerous
retainers in the Lower House who had been wont so loudly to applaud the
secretary of state, in his prosecution of those very measures for
which he was now to be condemned,--two men only, General Ross and
Mr. Hungerford, uttered a single syllable in defence of the minister
disgraced.--ED.

Bolingbroke smiled, and quoted Cicero, and after an hour's conversation,
which on his part was by no means like that of a person whose very head
was in no enviable state of safety, he slid at once from a sarcasm upon
Steele into a discussion as to the best measures to be adopted. Let me
be brief on this point. Throughout the whole of that short session, he
behaved in a manner more delicately and profoundly wise than, I think,
the whole of his previous administration can equal. He sustained with
the most unflagging, the most unwearied, dexterity, the sinking spirits
of his associates. Without an act, or the shadow of an act, that could
be called time-serving, he laid himself out to conciliate the king,
and to propitiate Parliament; with a dignified prudence which, while it
seemed above petty pique, was well calculated to remove the appearance
of that disaffection with which he was charged, and discriminated justly
between the king