pp'd into prison the
representative of his only friend, and now, we see, has given him up to
death, to satiate the demands of his greatest enemy.

Horatio could not keep himself from falling into a deep musing at the
recital of this adventure: he thought Patkul worthy of compassion, yet
found reasons to justify the king's resentment; and as this officer had
often disburthened himself to him with the greatest freedom, he had no
reserve toward him, and this led them into a discourse on arbitrary
power.--Horatio said, that he could not help believing that nature never
intended millions to be subjected to the despotic will of one person,
and that a limited government was the most conformable to reason. The
officer agreed with him in that; except the person who ruled had really
more perfections than all those he ruled over and if so, said he, and
his commands are always calculated for the happiness of the subject,
they cannot be more happy than in an implicite obedience. True, replied
Horatio, I am confident that such a prince as ours knows how to chuse
for his people much better than they do for themselves; but how can they
be certain that his descendants will have the same virtues; and when
once an absolute power is granted to a good prince, it will be in vain
that the people will endeavour to wrest it from the hands of a bad
one.--Never can any point be redeemed from the crown without a vast
effusion of blood, and the endangering such calamities on the country,
that the relief would be as bad as the disease. Upon the whole,
therefore, I cannot think Patkul in the wrong for attempting to maintain
the liberty of his country, tho' I do for entering into the service of
the avowed enemy of his master.

It is that, I believe, resumed the other, that the king chiefly resents:
his majesty is too just to condemn a man for maintaining the principles
he was bred in, however they may disagree with his own; but to become
his enemy, to enlist himself in the service of those who aim at the
destruction of his lawful prince, is certainly a treason of the
blackest dye.

As they were in this discourse, colonel Poniatosky came in, and hearing
they were speaking of Patkul,--I have just now, said he, received a
letter from one of my friends in Saxony concerning that general, which
deeply affects me, not for his own, but for the sake of a lady, to whom,
after a long series of disappointments, he was just going to be married,
when Augustus, a