This Patkul, said he, is a Livonian born, which, tho’ a free country, is part of the dominions annexed to the crown of Sweden:  Charles XI. began to introduce a more absolute form of government than was consistent with the humour of that people; his son has been far from receding in that point, and Patkul being a person of great consideration among them, stood up for their liberties in a manner which our king could not forgive:—­he ordered him to be seized, but he made his escape, and was proscribed in Sweden; on which he entered into the service of king Augustus, and was made his general; but on some misunderstanding; between him and the chancellor, he quitted Poland and went to Russia, where he got into great favour with the czar, was highly promoted, and sent his residentiary ambassador in Saxony.  Augustus, whose fate it has been to disoblige every body, on some pretence clapp’d into prison the representative of his only friend, and now, we see, has given him up to death, to satiate the demands of his greatest enemy.

Horatio could not keep himself from falling into a deep musing at the recital of this adventure:  he thought Patkul worthy of compassion, yet found reasons to justify the king’s resentment; and as this officer had often disburthened himself to him with the greatest freedom, he had no reserve toward him, and this led them into a discourse on arbitrary power.—­Horatio said, that he could not help believing that nature never intended millions to be subjected to the despotic will of one person, and that a limited government was the most conformable to reason.  The officer agreed with him in that; except the person who ruled had really more perfections than all those he ruled over and if so, said he, and his commands are always calculated for the happiness of the subject, they cannot be more happy than in an implicite obedience.  True, replied Horatio, I am confident that such a prince as ours knows how to chuse for his people much better than they do for themselves; but how can they be certain that his descendants will have the same virtues; and when once an absolute power is granted to a good prince, it will be in vain that the people will endeavour to wrest it from the hands of a bad one.—­Never can any point be redeemed from the crown without a vast effusion of blood, and the endangering such calamities on the country, that the relief would be as bad as the disease.  Upon the whole, therefore, I cannot think Patkul in the wrong for attempting to maintain the liberty of his country, tho’ I do for entering into the service of the avowed enemy of his master.

It is that, I believe, resumed the other, that the king chiefly resents:  his majesty is too just to condemn a man for maintaining the principles he was bred in, however they may disagree with his own; but to become his enemy, to enlist himself in the service of those who aim at the destruction of his lawful prince, is certainly a treason of the blackest dye.