It is wonderful to observe the bias among our people in favour of things, persons, and wares of all kinds that come from England.  The printer tells his hawkers that he has got “an excellent new song just brought from London.”  I have somewhat of a tendency that way myself; and upon hearing a coxcomb from thence displaying himself with great volubility upon the park, the playhouse, the opera, the gaming ordinaries, it was apt to beget in me a kind of veneration for his parts and accomplishments.  ’Tis not many years, since I remember a person who by his style and literature seems to have been corrector of a hedge-press in some blind alley about Little Britain, proceed gradually to be an author, at least a translator of a lower rate, though somewhat of a larger bulk, than any that now flourishes in Grub Street; and upon the strength of this foundation, come over here, erect himself up into an orator and politician, and lead a kingdom after him.[15] This, I am told, was the very motive that prevailed on the author of a play, called “Love in a hollow Tree,” to do us the honour of a visit; presuming with very good reason, that he was a writer of a superior class.[16] I know another, who for thirty years past, hath been the common standard of stupidity in England, where he was never heard a minute in any assembly, or by any party with common Christian treatment; yet upon his arrival hither, could put on a face of importance and authority, talked more than six, without either gracefulness, propriety, or meaning; and at the same time be admired and followed as the pattern of eloquence and wisdom.

Nothing hath humbled me so much, or shewn a greater disposition to a contemptuous treatment of Ireland in some chief governors,[17] than that high style of several speeches from the throne, delivered, as usual, after the royal assent, in some periods of the two last reigns.  Such high exaggerations of the prodigious condescensions in the prince, to pass those good laws, would have but an odd sound at Westminster:  Neither do I apprehend how any good law can pass, wherein the king’s interest is not as much concerned as that of the people.  I remember after a speech on the like occasion, delivered by my Lord Wharton, (I think it was his last) he desired Mr. Addison to ask my opinion of it:  My answer was, “That his Excellency had very honestly forfeited his head on account of one paragraph; wherein he asserted by plain consequence, a dispensing power in the Queen.”  His Lordship owned it was true, but swore the words were put into his mouth by direct orders from Court.  From whence it is clear, that some ministers in those times, were apt, from their high elevation, to look down upon this kingdom as if it had been one of their colonies of outcasts in America.  And I observed a little of the same turn of spirit in some great men, from whom I expected better; although to do them justice, it proved no point of difficulty to make them correct their idea, whereof the whole nation quickly found the benefit?—­But that is forgotten.  How the style hath since run, I am wholly a stranger, having never seen a speech since the last of the Queen.