Wesley Corpus

Wilkes and his friends. But can you really believe this would mend the matter? would put an end to all these commotions? Certainly the sending his mother to the Indies would avail nothing, unless he removed his Ministers too. Nor would the putting out these, yea, every man of them, avail anything, unless at the same time he put in every man whom Lord Chatham chose. But neither would this avail, unless he struck the finishing-stroke, by dissolving the Parliament. Then indeed he would be as perfectly safe as the “sheep that had given up their dogs.” It would puzzle the wisest man alive to tell what the King -can do. What can he do, that will still the raging of the sea, or the madness of the people? Do you imagine it is in his power to do anything which will please all parties? Can he do anything that will not displease one as much as it will please the other? Shall he drive his mother out of the land? * Will this then please all parties? Nay, will not some be apt to inquire, “How has she deserved it at his hands?” “Why, she is an evil counsellor.” How does this appear? Who are the witnesses of it? Indeed we have read as grave and formal accounts of the conferences at Carlton-House, as if the relater had stood all the time behind the curtain, and taken down the whole matter in short-hand. But what shadow of proof of all this? No more than of the conferences related in Tristram Shandy. “But she is a bad woman.” Who ever said or thought so, even while she was in the flower of her age? From the time she first set foot in England, was there a more faultless character in the nation? Nay, was not her whole behaviour as a wife, as a mother, as a mistress, and as a Princess, not only blameless but commendable in the highest degree, till that period of time arrived, when it was judged proper, in order to blacken her (supposed) favourite, to asperse her too? And then she was illud quod dicere nolo 't One would think that even the ignobile vulgus, “the beasts of the people,” the lowest, basest herd who wore the human form, would be ashamed of either advancing or crediting so senseless, shame less a tale.