The system of government will appear, not a regular and proportioned beauty, like the pheasant of India, but a gaudy and glaring system of unconnected parts, like Esop’s daw with borrowed feathers.  Anarchy and darkness will be the original appearance.  But light shall spring out of the noon of night; harmony and order shall succeed the chaos.  The present patchwork of three different forms of government shall be changed into one simple and godlike system of despotism.  Thus, when London was burned, a more commodious and healthful city sprung as it were out of her ashes.

But neither Rome nor London was built in a day.  The glorious work I am recommending to you must be a work of time.  At first it will be necessary for the person who would subvert the silly system of English government, to enter upon his undertaking with infinite timidity and precaution.  He must stalk along in silence like Tarquin to the rape of Lucretia.  His horses, like those of Lear, must be shoed with felt.  He must shroud himself in the thickest shade.  Let him comfort himself with this reflexion: 

“It is but for a time.  It will soon be over.  No work of mortal hands can long stand against concussions so violent.  Ulysses, who entered Troy, shut up in the cincture of the wooden horse, shall soon burst the enclosure, shall terrify those from whose observation he lately shrunk, and carry devastation and ruin on whatever side he turns.”

My lord, I have considered the subject of politics with as much acuteness as any man.  I have revolved a thousand schemes, which to recommend to the pursuit of the statesman of my own creation.  But there is no plan of action that appears to me half so grand and comprehensive, as this of secret influence.  It is true the scheme is not entirely new.  It has been a subject of discussion ever since the English nation could boast any thing like a regular system of liberty.  It was complained of under king William.  It was boasted of, even to ostentation, by the Tory ministers of queen Anne.  The Pelhams cried out upon it in lord Carteret.  It has been the business of half the history of the present reign to fix the charge upon my lord Bute.

And yet in spite of these appearances, in spite of all the deductions that modesty can authorise, I may boldly affirm that my scheme has something in it that is truly original.  My lord, I would not have you proceed by leaps and starts, like these half-fledged statesmen.  I would have you proceed from step to step in a finished and faultless plan.  I have too an improvement without which the first step is of no value, which yet has seldom been added, which at first sight has a very daring appearance, but which I pretend to teach your lordship to practice with perfect safety.  But it is necessary for me, before I come to this grand arcanum of my system, to premise a few observations for the more accurately managing the influence itself.