able to make so great a progress in power as to
hurt us here in our island. To them it is easy to repeat the same answer
a hundred times over, if they would be so kind as to take it at last,
viz., _that what has been may be again_; and that they did not see how
he could reach the height of power, which he has already arrived at,
after, I must confess, a very incredible manner. Let those _incredulous_
people look narrowly into the _nature_ and the _ends_ and the _designs_
of this great monarch; they will find that they are laid very deep, and
that his plans carry in them a prodigious deal of prudence and
foresight, and his ends are at the long run brought about by a kind of
magic in policy; and will they not after that own that we ought to fear
everything from him? As he desires that the designs with which he
labours may not prove abortive, so he does not assign them a certain day
of their birth, but leaves them to the natural productions of fit times
and occasions, like those curious artists in China, who temper the mould
this day of which a vessel may be made a hundred years hence.

There is another sort of short-sighted politicians among us, who have
more of cunning court intrigue and immediate statecraft in them than of
true policy and concern for their country's interest. These gentlemen
pin entirely their faith upon other people's sleeves; ask as to
everything that is proposed to them, how it is liked at Court? what the
opinion of their party is concerning it? and if the contrary party is
for or against it? Hereby they rule their judgment, and it is enough for
their cunning leaders to brand anything with _Whiggism_ or _Jacobitism_,
for to make these people, without any further inquiry into the matter,
blindly espouse it or oppose it. This, it seems, is at present the case
of the subject we are upon. Anything said or written in favour of
Sweden and the King thereof, is immediately said to come from a
_Jacobite_ pen, and thus reviled and rejected, without being read or
considered. Nay, I have heard gentlemen go so far as to maintain
publicly, and with all the vehemence in the world, that the King of
Sweden was a Roman Catholic, and that the Czar was a good Protestant.
This, indeed, is one of the greatest misfortunes our country labours
under, and till we begin to see with our own eyes, and inquire ourselves
into the truth of things, we shall be led away, God knows whither, at
last. The serving of Sweden according to o