Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis
  Tempus eget——­[5]

This is the more to be wondered at, when we consider they have the full liberty of the press, that they have no other way left to recover themselves, and that they want not men of excellent parts to set their arguments in the best light they will bear.  Now if two men would argue on both sides with fairness, good sense, and good manners, it would be no ill entertainment to the town, and perhaps be the most effectual means to reconcile us.  But I am apt to think that men of a great genius are hardly brought to prostitute their pens in a very odious cause; which besides, is more properly undertaken by noise and impudence, by gross railing and scurrility, by calumny and lying, and by little trifling cavils and carpings in the wrong place, which those whifflers use for arguments and answers.

I was well enough pleased with a story of one of these answerers, who in a paper[6] last week found many faults with a late calculation of mine.  Being it seems more deep learned than his fellows, he was resolved to begin his answer with a Latin verse, as well as other folks:  His business was to look out for something against an “Examiner” that would pretend to tax accounts; and turning over Virgil, he had the luck to find these words,

------fugiant examina taxos;[7]

so down they went, and out they would have come, if one of his unlucky prompters had not hindered it.

I here declare once for all, that if these people will not be quiet, I shall take the bread out of their mouths, and answer the “Examiner” myself;[8] which I protest I have never yet done, though I have been often charged with it; neither have those answers been written or published with my privity, as malicious people are pleased to give out; nor do I believe the common Whiggish report, that the authors are hired by the ministry to give my paper a value.

But the friends of this paper have given me more uneasiness with their impatience, than its enemies by their answers.  I heard myself censured last week by some of the former, for promising to discover the corruptions in the late administration, but never performing any thing.  The latter on the other side, are thundering out their anathemas against me for discovering so many.  I am at a loss how to decide between these contraries, and shall therefore proceed after my own way, as I have hitherto done:  my design being of more importance than that of writing only to gratify the spleen of one side, or provoke that of the other, though it may occasionally have both effects.

I shall therefore go on to relate some facts that in my humble opinion were no hindrance to the change of the ministry.