Well thought of!--Why, sir, in your new office you will be liable to all sorts of attacks--Ministers always are, and an angry boy cannot hope to escape.--Now nothing, you know, is so much to the purpose as to have the first blow--Blunders are very natural.--Your friends tell one story in the upper house, and you another in the lower--You shall give up a territory to the enemy that you ought to have kept, and when charged with it, shall unluckily drop that you and your colleagues were ignorant of the geography of the country--You foresee an attack--you immediately open--Plans so extensively beneficial--accounts so perfectly consistent--measures so judicious and accurate--no man can question--no man can object to--but a rascal and a knave.--Let him come forward!
Very good! very good!--For the QUARREL OPSTREPEROUS, that I easily conceive.--An antagonist objects shrewdly--I cannot invent an answer.--In that case, there is nothing to be done but to drown his reasons in noise--nonsense--and vociferation.
Come to my arms, my dear Kastril! O thou art an apt scholar--thou wilt be nonpareil in the art of brawling!--But for the QUARREL SENSITIVE--
Why, it is thus, my dear boy--A minister is apt to be sore.--Every man cannot have the phlegm of Burleigh.--And an angry boy is sorest of all.--In that case--an objection is made that would dumbfound any other man--he parries it with--my honour--and my integrity--and the rectitude of my intentions--my spotless fame--my unvaried truth--and the greatness of my abilities--And so gives no answer at all.
The QUARREL OBLIQUE is easy enough.--It is only to talk in general terms of places and pensions--the loaves and the fishes--a struggle for power--a struggle for power--And it will do excellent well, if at a critical moment--you can throw in a hint of some forty or fifty millions unaccounted for by some people's grandfathers and uncles dead fifty years ago.
Lastly, for the QUARREL PERSONAL--It may be infinitely diversified.--I have other instances in my eye,--but I will mention only one.--Minds capable of the widest comprehension, when held back from their proper field, may turn to lesser employments, that fools may wonder at, and canting hypocrites accuse--A CATO might indulge to the pleasures of the bottle, and a CAESAR might play--Unfortunately you may have a CAESAR to oppose you--Let him discuss a matter of finance--that subject is always open--there you have an easy answer. In the former case you parried, here you thrust.--You must admire at his presumption--tell him roundly he is not capable of the subject--and dam his strongest reasons by calling them the reasons of a gambler.