actions of the present ministry: their safety and interest are visibly united with those of the publick, they are persons of unquestionable abilities, altogether unsuspected of avarice or corruption, and have the advantage to be farther recommended by the dread and hatred of the opposite faction. However, it is manifest that the zeal of their friends has been cooling toward them for above two years past: they have been frequently deserted or distressed upon the most pressing occasions, and very near giving up in despair: their characters have been often treated with the utmost barbarity and injustice, in both houses, by scurrilous and enraged orators; while their nearest friends, and even those who must have a share in their disgrace, never offered a word in their vindication.
When I examine with myself what occasions the ministry may have given for this coldness, inconstancy, and discontent among their friends, I at the same time recollect the various conjectures, reasonings, and suspicions, which have run so freely for three years past, concerning the designs of the court: I do not only mean such conjectures, as are born in a coffeehouse, or invented by the malice of a party; but also the conclusions (however mistaken) of wise and good men, whose quality and station fitted them to understand the reason of publick proceedings, and in whose power it lay to recommend or disgrace an administration to the people. I must therefore take the boldness to assert, that all these discontents, how ruinous soever they may prove in the consequences, have most unnecessarily arisen from the want of a due communication and concert. Every man must have a light
