Daughter of a Man who can give you suitably to your Fortune.  But if you weigh the Attendance and Behaviour of her who comes to you in Partnership of your Fortune, and expects an Equivalent, with that of her who enters your House as honoured and obliged by that Permission, whom of the two will you chuse?  You, perhaps, will think fit to spend a Day abroad in the common Entertainments of Men of Sense and Fortune; she will think herself ill-used in that Absence, and contrive at Home an Expence proportioned to the Appearance which you make in the World.  She is in all things to have a Regard to the Fortune which she brought you, I to the Fortune to which you introduced me.  The Commerce between you two will eternally have the Air of a Bargain, between us of a Friendship:  Joy will ever enter into the Room with you, and kind Wishes attend my Benefactor when he leaves it.  Ask your self, how would you be pleased to enjoy for ever the Pleasure of having laid an immediate Obligation on a grateful Mind? such will be your Case with Me.  In the other Marriage you will live in a constant Comparison of Benefits, and never know the Happiness of conferring or receiving any.

It may be you will, after all, act rather in the prudential Way, according to the Sense of the ordinary World.  I know not what I think or say, when that melancholy Reflection comes upon me; but shall only add more, that it is in your Power to make me your Grateful Wife, but never your Abandoned Mistress.

T.

[Footnote 1:  A character in Madame Scuderi’s ‘Grand Cyrus.’]

[Footnote 2:  made to]

* * * * *

No. 200.  Friday, October 19, 1711.  Steele. [1]

      ‘Vincit Amor Patriae.’

      Virg.

The Ambition of Princes is many times as hurtful to themselves as to their People.  This cannot be doubted of such as prove unfortunate in their Wars, but it is often true too of those who are celebrated for their Successes.  If a severe View were to be taken of their Conduct, if the Profit and Loss by their Wars could be justly ballanced, it would be rarely found that the Conquest is sufficient to repay the Cost.

As I was the other Day looking over the Letters of my Correspondents, I took this Hint from that of Philarithmus [2]; which has turned my present Thoughts upon Political Arithmetick, an Art of greater Use than Entertainment.  My Friend has offered an Essay towards proving that Lewis XIV. with all his Acquisitions is not Master of more People than at the Beginning of his Wars, nay that for every Subject he had acquired, he had lost Three that were his Inheritance:  If Philarithmus is not mistaken in his Calculations, Lewis must have been impoverished by his Ambition.