Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/278

270 parties in the senate. His last minister, who governed in the most arbitrary manner for several years; he was thought to hate more than he did any other person in Japan, except his only son, the heir to the empire. The dislike he bore to the former was, because the minister, under pretence that he could not govern the senate without disposing of employments among them, would not suffer his master to oblige one single person, but disposed of all to his own relations and dependents. But, as to that continued and virulent hatred he bore to the prince his son, from the beginnirig of his reign to his death, the historian has not accounted for it, farther than by various conjectures, which do not deserve to be related.

The minister above mentioned was of a family not contemptible, had been early a senator, and from his youth a mortal enemy to the Yortes. He had been formerly disgraced in the senate, for some frauds in the management of a publick trust. He was perfectly skilled, by long practice in the senatorial forms; and dextrous in the purchasing of votes, from those who could find their accounts better in complying with his measures, than they could probably lose by any tax that might be charged on the kingdom. He seemed to fail, in point of policy, by not concealing his gettings; never scrupling openly to lay out vast sums of money in paintings, buildings, and purchasing estates; when it was known that upon his first coming into business, upon the death of the empress Nena, his fortune was but inconsiderable. He had the most boldness, and the least magnanimity that ever any mortal was endowed with. By enriching his relations, friends,