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 improvement; and every nation, however degenerate, gives birth, at some happy period of time, to men of great and enterprising genius. It is our fortune to be witnesses of a new discovery in polities. We may congratulate ourselves upon being contemporaries with those men who have shown that hangmen and halters are unnecessary in a state and that ministers may escape the reproach of destroying their enemies by inciting them to destroy themselves.

For this purpose, my lords, what could have been invented more efficacious than an establishment of a certain number of shops at which poison may be vended—poison so prepared as to please the palate, while it wastes the strength, and only kills by intoxication? From the first instant that any of the enemies of the ministry shall grow clamorous and turbulent, a crafty hireling may lead him to the ministerial slaughterhouse and ply him with their wonder-working liquor till he is no longer able to speak or think, and, my lords, no man can be more agreeable to our ministers that he can neither speak nor think, except those who speak without thinking.