while I doubt not, if the persons most concerned would but order Mr. Bernard Lintot, the printer and publisher of this dangerous piece, to be taken into custody and examined, many farther discoveries might be made, both of this poet's and abettor's secret designs, which are doubtless of the utmost importance to the government. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. PARTY is the madness of many, for the gain of a few. There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal, whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead. However, such instruments are necessary to politicians; and perhaps it may be with states as with clocks, which must have some dead weight hanging at them, to help and regulate the motion of the finer and more useful parts. To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor. Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of readier change. Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skilful hands; in unskilful, the most mischievous. The nicest constitutions of government are often like the finest picces of clock-work, which, depending on so many motions, are therefore more subject to be out of order. |