[Footnote 25:  The Earl of Sunderland was rude and overbearing in his manner towards the Queen. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 26:  Henry St. John (1678-1751) was created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712.  He was secretary of war, 1704-1708, and secretary of state, 1710-14.  In 1715 he was attainted and left England to enter the service of the Pretender.  See also Swift’s “An Enquiry,” etc. (vol. v., p. 430 of present edition). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 27:  “Those more early acquaintance of yours, your books, which a friend of ours once wittily said, ’Your L—­p had mistaken the true use of, by thumbing and spoiling them with reading’” ("A Letter to the Rt.  Hon. the Ld.  Viscount B—­ke,” 1714-15). [T.S.]]

NUMB. 28.[1]

FROM THURSDAY FEBRUARY 1, TO THURSDAY FEBRUARY 8, 1710-11.

Caput est in omni procuratione negotii et muneris publici, ut avaritiae pellatur etiam minima suspicio.[2]

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice:  Those two which seem to rival it in this point, are lust and ambition:  but, the former is checked by difficulties and diseases, destroys itself by its own pursuits, and usually declines with old age:  and the latter requiring courage, conduct and fortune in a high degree, and meeting with a thousand dangers and oppositions, succeeds too seldom in an age to fall under common observation.  Or, is avarice perhaps the same passion with ambition, only placed in more ignoble and dastardly minds, by which the object is changed from power to money?  Or it may be, that one man pursues power in order to wealth, and another wealth in order to power; which last is the safer way, though longer about, and suiting with every period as well as condition of life, is more generally followed.

However it be, the extremes of this passion are certainly more frequent than of any other, and often to a degree so absurd and ridiculous, that if it were not for their frequency, they could hardly obtain belief.  The stage, which carries other follies and vices beyond nature and probability, falls very short in the representations of avarice; nor are there any extravagances in this kind described by ancient or modern comedies, which are not outdone by an hundred instances, commonly told, among ourselves.

I am ready to conclude from hence, that a vice which keeps so firm a hold upon human nature, and governs it with so unlimited a tyranny, since it cannot be wholly eradicated, ought at least to be confined to particular objects, to thrift and penury, to private fraud and extortion, and never suffered to prey upon the public; and should certainly be rejected as the most unqualifying circumstance for any employment, where bribery and corruption can possibly enter.