Minister

,—a word that comprehends all that imagination can conceive of the corrupt, the treacherous, the cruel, the vindictive, and the oppressive; all that is calculated to make human nature hang down its head with sorrow and with shame. Ministers, as Bolingbroke calls them, “are the corrupt engrossers of delegated authority.” They must be servile, and compliant with every humor and caprice of the sovereign, and they must learn to despise the rights, and undermine the privileges, of the People. If they can do this, as Pitt has done, after having cajoled them with delusive promises and expectations, they stand a surer chance of obtaining the royal patronage and favor; and to add cruelty to perfidy, arrogance to oppression, and insolence to folly, is the polished perfection of the ministerial character. Walpole was once thought to be too corrupt for a minister; but were such a man as Walpole to succeed Pitt, the utmost corruption of which Walpole was capable would be innocence and purity itself, compared to the black and detestable policy, the tricks, the baseness, and the low cunning, of his predecessor.