After his last fruitless conference with the ministers, Swift immediately retired, as he said he would, to a friend's house in Berkshire. But this retirement was not owing to a timid disposition, which might prompt him to be out of harm's way at this dangerous juncture; nor to a principle of trimming, which might induce him to lie upon the lurch till he saw which party in the ministry should gain the ascendant; no, it was from a motive consonant to the nobleness of his mind. He had already acquitted himself to the utmost in point of friendship to the ministers; and by endeavouring to unite them, had taken the shortest and surest way to serve the common cause. When this was found impracticable, he thought his duty to the publick, at so critical a conjuncture, paramount to all other considerations whatsoever; he therefore retired, in order to have leisure to lay open to the world the true causes of the violent disorders of the state, let it offend whom it would; and to point out the only remedies that could effect a cure, however unpalatable they might prove to some of his best friends. It was on this occasion that he wrote that spirited pamphlet, called, Some free Thoughts upon the present State of Affairs; in which, with great boldness, he charges the ministers as the chief causes of the reigning disorders, from their misconduct; and lays the greatest load of blame on the man whom he loved best in the world, lord Oxford. Acting in this, like a friendly and skilful surgeon, who lays open the sore to the bottom, however painful the operation may prove to the patient, when he sees no other way of preventing a gangrene. The general blame which he throws out upon the ministry, is prefaced in this manner: "It
