Mr Pulteney
Swift says, in a letter to Mr. Pulteney: I will do an unmannerly thing,
which is to bequeath you an epitaph for forty years hence, in two words,
ultimus Britannorum. You never forsook your party. You might often
have been as great as the court can make any man so; but you preserved
your spirit of liberty when your former colleagues had utterly
sacrificed theirs; and if it shall ever begin to breathe in these days,
it m
st entirely be owing to yourself and one or two friends; but it is
altogether impossible for any nation to preserve its liberty long under
a tenth part of the present luxury, infidelity, and a million of
corruptions. We see the Gothic system of limited monarchy is
extinguished in all the nations of Europe. It is utterly extirpated in
this wretched kingdom, and yours must be next. Such has ever been human
nature, that a single man, without any superior advantages either of
body or mind, but usually the direct contrary, is able to attach twenty
millions, and drag them voluntarily at his chariot wheels. But no more
of this: I am as sick of the world as I am of age and disease. I live in
a nation of slaves, who sell themselves for nothing.