and upon that minister’s being again taken into favour, this gentleman was some time after made secretary of state.  There he began afresh, by the opportunities of his station, to look into past miscarriages; and, by the force of an extraordinary genius, and application to public affairs, joined with an invincible eloquence, laid open the scene of miscarriages and corruptions through the whole course of the war, in so evident a manner, that the House of Commons seemed principally directed in their resolutions, upon this inquiry, by his information and advice.  In a short time after the Representation was published, there appeared a memorial in the Dutch “Gazette,” as by order of the States, reflecting very much upon the said Representation, as well as the resolutions on which it was founded, pretending to deny some of the facts, and to extenuate others.  This memorial, translated into English, a common writer of news had the boldness to insert in one of his papers.  A complaint being made thereof to the House of Commons, they voted the pretended memorial to be a false, scandalous, malicious libel, and ordered the printer to be taken into custody.[32]

[Footnote 31:  See his character in Swift’s “Enquiry,” vol. v., pp. 430-431, of this edition. [W.S.J.]]

[Footnote 32:  The memorial appeared in the “Daily Courant” of 7th and 8th April, for which Samuel Buckley, the writer and printer, was ordered by the House of Commons to be taken into custody on April 11th. [W.S.J.]]

It was the misfortune of the ministers, that while they were baited by their professed adversaries of the discontented faction, acting in confederacy with emissaries of foreign powers, to break the measures Her Majesty had taken towards a peace, they met at the same time with frequent difficulties from those who agreed and engaged with them to pursue the same general end; but sometimes disapproved the methods as too slack and remiss, or, in appearance, now and then perhaps a little dubious.  In the first session of this Parliament, a considerable number of gentlemen, all members of the House of Commons, began to meet by themselves, and consult what course they ought to steer in this new world.  They intended to revive a new country party in Parliament, which might, as in former times, oppose the court in any proceedings they disliked.  The whole body was of such who profess what is commonly called high-church principles, upon which account they were irreconcilable enemies to the late ministry and all its adherents.  On the other side, considering the temper of the new men in power, that they were persons who had formerly moved between the two extremes, those gentlemen, who were impatient for an entire change, and to see all their adversaries laid at once as low as the dust, began to be apprehensive that the work would be done by halves.  But the juncture of affairs at that time, both at home and abroad, would by no means admit of the least precipitation, although the Queen and