Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/172

158 peace, it being her constant maxim, "That it was more glorious to prevent a war by wisdom, than to finish it by victories." When she had a mind to break off in the middle of a successful war, in which she was engaged against a more formidable power, and a more hopeful candidate for universal monarchy, than any that has since appeared; a war that was managed without the help of destructive funds, and large issues of English treasures to foreign states; a war that was carried on with the proper force of the nation, viz. their fleets, and rather served to bring in great quantities of bullion, than to carry it out: I say, when she had a mind to make peace, I do not hear that every little retailer of politicks presumed to tell her, that it was not yet time to lay down her arms; that Spain was not yet sufficiently reduced; that the balance of Europe was not perfectly settled. Indeed, her captain general for that war seemed to reason at the council board with too much warmth for the continuance of it; but I do not hear that her lord treasurer was disgraced for advertising him at that time, "that the bloodthirsty man should not live half his days;" a prophecy but too truly verified. When she resolved to bring down the haughty spirit of that great man, I do not read that many people soothed him in his ambitious projects; except his flatterers, Blunt and Cuffe, to whom he spoke these remarkable word, upon the scaffold, "Ask pardon of God and the queen; for you were the persons that chiefly provoked me to this disloyalty." And happy had it been for him, had he hearkened to the lord keeper, who advised him to submit to the queen his sovereign, and to remember that passage of Seneca: " If