him [the Speaker] “still appear more vile and contemptible.”  This is an extract from his first paragraph.  In the next this writer says, that the Speaker’s “praying to God for the continuance of Mr. Harley’s life, as an invaluable blessing,[11] was a fulsome piece of insincerity, which exposes him to shame and derision”; because he is “known to bear ill will to Mr. Harley, to have an extreme bad opinion of him, and to think him an obstructor of those fine measures he would bring about.”

I now appeal to the Whigs themselves, whether a great minister of state, in high favour with the Qu[een], and a Speaker of the House of Commons, were ever publicly treated after so extraordinary a manner, in the most licentious times?  For this is not a clandestine libel stolen into the world, but openly printed and sold, with the bookseller’s name and place of abode at the bottom.  And the juncture is admirable, when Mr. H[arle]y is generally believed upon the very point to be made an earl, and promoted to the most important station of the kingdom:[12] nay, the very marks of esteem he hath so lately received from the whole representative body of the people, are called “ill-chosen flattery,” and “a fulsome piece of insincerity,” exposing the donors “to shame and derision.”

Does this intrepid writer think he has sufficiently disguised the matter, by that stale artifice of altering the story, and putting it as a supposed case?  Did any man who ever saw the congratulatory speech, read either of those paragraphs in the “Medley,” without interpreting them just as I have done?  Will the author declare upon his great sincerity, that he never had any such meaning?  Is it enough, that a jury at Westminster-Hall would, perhaps, not find him guilty of defaming the Speaker and Mr. Harley in that paper? which however, I am much in doubt of too; and must think the law very defective, if the reputation of such persons must lie at the mercy of such pens.  I do not remember to have seen any libel, supposed to be writ with caution and double meaning, in order to prevent prosecution, delivered under so thin a cover, or so unartificially made up as this; whether it were from an apprehension of his readers’ dullness, or an effect of his own.  He hath transcribed the very phrases of the Speaker, and put them in a different character, for fear they might pass unobserved, and to prevent all possibility of being mistaken.  I shall be pleased to see him have recourse to the old evasion, and say, that I who make the application, am chargeable with the abuse:  let any reader of either party be judge.  But I cannot forbear asserting, as my opinion, that for a m[inist]ry to endure such open calumny, without calling the author to account, is next to deserving it.  And this is an omission I venture to charge upon the present m[inist]ry, who are too apt to despise little things, which however have not always little consequences.