All For Love | Page 5

to the public calamity, by
forestalling the credit which should cure it. Your friends on the other side were only
capable of pitying, but not of aiding you; no further help or counsel was remaining to you,
but what was founded on yourself; and that indeed was your security; for your diligence,
your constancy, and your prudence, wrought most surely within, when they were not
disturbed by any outward motion. The highest virtue is best to be trusted with itself; for
assistance only can be given by a genius superior to that which it assists; and it is the
noblest kind of debt, when we are only obliged to God and nature. This then, my lord, is
your just commendation, and that you have wrought out yourself a way to glory, by those
very means that were designed for your destruction: You have not only restored but
advanced the revenues of your master, without grievance to the subject; and, as if that
were little yet, the debts of the exchequer, which lay heaviest both on the crown, and on
private persons, have by your conduct been established in a certainty of satisfaction. An
action so much the more great and honourable, because the case was without the ordinary
relief of laws; above the hopes of the afflicted and beyond the narrowness of the treasury
to redress, had it been managed by a less able hand. It is certainly the happiest, and most
unenvied part of all your fortune, to do good to many, while you do injury to none; to
receive at once the prayers of the subject, and the praises of the prince; and, by the care of
your conduct, to give him means of exerting the chiefest (if any be the chiefest) of his
royal virtues, his distributive justice to the deserving, and his bounty and compassion to
the wanting. The disposition of princes towards their people cannot be better discovered
than in the choice of their ministers; who, like the animal spirits betwixt the soul and
body, participate somewhat of both natures, and make the communication which is
betwixt them. A king, who is just and moderate in his nature, who rules according to the
laws, whom God has made happy by forming the temper of his soul to the constitution of
his government, and who makes us happy, by assuming over us no other sovereignty than
that wherein our welfare and liberty consists; a prince, I say, of so excellent a character,
and so suitable to the wishes of all good men, could not better have conveyed himself
into his people's apprehensions, than in your lordship's person; who so lively express the
same virtues, that you seem not so much a copy, as an emanation of him. Moderation is
doubtless an establishment of greatness; but there is a steadiness of temper which is
likewise requisite in a minister of state; so equal a mixture of both virtues, that he may
stand like an isthmus betwixt the two encroaching seas of arbitrary power, and lawless
anarchy. The undertaking would be difficult to any but an extraordinary genius, to stand
at the line, and to divide the limits; to pay what is due to the great representative of the
nation, and neither to enhance, nor to yield up, the undoubted prerogatives of the crown.
These, my lord, are the proper virtues of a noble Englishman, as indeed they are properly
English virtues; no people in the world being capable of using them, but we who have the

happiness to be born under so equal, and so well-poised a government;--a government
which has all the advantages of liberty beyond a commonwealth, and all the marks of
kingly sovereignty, without the danger of a tyranny. Both my nature, as I am an
Englishman, and my reason, as I am a man, have bred in me a loathing to that specious
name of a republic; that mock appearance of a liberty, where all who have not part in the
government, are slaves; and slaves they are of a viler note, than such as are subjects to an
absolute dominion. For no Christian monarchy is so absolute, but it is circumscribed with
laws; but when the executive power is in the law-makers, there is no further check upon
them; and the people must suffer without a remedy, because they are oppressed by their
representatives. If I must serve, the number of my masters, who were born my equals,
would but add to the ignominy of my bondage. The nature of our government, above all
others, is exactly suited both to the situation of our country, and the temper of the natives;
an island being more proper for commerce and for defence, than for extending its
dominions on the Continent; for what the valour