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Publifhd for Bells British Theatre Aug 12 th1776.

Thornthwaite Sculpt

MHARTLEY in the Character of CLEOPATRA. I'll die, I will not bear it.

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AS PERFORMED AT THE

Theatre Royal in Dury-Lane.

Regulated from the Prompt-Book,

By PERMISSION of the MANAGERS,

By Mr. HOPKINS, Prompter.

Facile eft verbum aliquod ardens (ut ita dicam) notare: idque reftin&tie
animorum incendiis irridere.

B

LONDON:

CICERO.

Printed for JOHN BELL, near Exeter-Exchange, in the Strand,

and C. ETHERINGTON, at York.

MDCCLXXVI.

A

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

THOMAS Earl of DANBY,

Viscount LATIMER, and Baron OSBORNE of KIVETON in YORKSHIRE;

Lord High Treasurer of England, one of his Majefty's most honou rable Privy-Council, and Knight of the most noble order

My LORD,

TH

of the Garter, &c.

HE gratitude of poets is so troublesome a virtue to great men, that you are often in danger of your own benefits: for you are threatened with fome epiftle, and not fuffered to do good in quiet, or, to compound for their filence whom you have obliged. Yet, I confefs, I neither am, nor ought to be furprized at this indulgence; for your Lordship has the fame right to favour poetry, which the great and noble have ever had.

Carmen amat, quifquis carmine digna gerit.

There is fomewhat of a tie in nature betwixt those who are born for worthy actions, and those who can transmit them to pofterity: And though ours be much the inferior part, it comes at leaft within the verge of alliance; nor are we unprofitable members of the common-wealth, when we animate others to thofe virtues which we copy and describe from you.

"Tis indeed their intereft, who endeavour the fubverfion of governments, to difcourage poets and hiftorians; for the best which can happen to them is to be forgotten: But fuch, who, under kings, are the fathers of their country, and by a juft and prudent ordering of affairs preferve it, have the fame reafon to cherish the chroniclers of their actions, as they have to lay up in fafety the deeds and evidences of their eftates: for fuch records are their undoubted titles to the love and reverence of after ages. Your Lordship's administration has already taken up a confiderable part of the English annals; and many of its moft happy years are owing to it. His Majesty, the most knowing judge of men, and the best master, has acknowledged the eafe and benefit he receives in the incomes of his treasury, which you found not only difordered but exhaufted. All things were in the confufion of a chaos, without form or method, if not reduced beyond it, even to annihilation: fo that you had not only to feparate the jarring elements, but (if that boldness of expreffion might be allowed me) to create them. Your enemies had fo embroiled the management of your office, that they looked on your advancement as the inftrument of your ruin. And as if the clogging of the revenue, and the confufion of accounts, which you found in your entrance, were not fufficient, they added their own weight of malice to the public calamity, by foreftalling the credit which fhould cure it: your friends, on the other fide, were only capable of pitying, but not of aiding you: no farther help or counfel was remaining to you, but what was founded on yourfelf; and that, indeed, was your fecurity for your diligence, your conftancy, and your prudence, wrought more furely within, when they were not difturbed by any outward motion. The highest virtue is best to be trufted with itself, for affiftance only can be given by a genius fuperior to that which it affifts. And 'tis the nobleft A 2 kind

kind of debt when we are only obliged to God and nature. This then my Lord, is your juft commendation, that you have wrought out yourself a way to glory, by thofe very means that were defigned for your deftruction: you have not only reftored but advanced the revenues of your mafter, without grievance to the fubject: and as if that were little yet, the debts of the Exchequer, which lay heaviest both on the Crown and on private perfons, have, by your conduct, been eftablished in a certainty of fatisfaction. An action fo much the more great and honourable, becaufe the cafe was without the ordinary relief of laws; above the hopes of the afflicted, and beyond the narrowness of the treafury to redrefs, had it been managed by a lefs able hand. 'Tis certainly the happiest, and most unenvied part of all your fortune, to do good to many, while you do injury to none: to receive at once the prayers of the fubject, and the praifes of the prince: and by the care of your conduct, to give him means of exerting the chieteit, (if any be the chiefeft) of his royal virtues: His diftributive juftice to the deferving, and his bounty and compaffion to the wanting, The difpofition of princes towards their people, cannot better be difcovered than in the choice of their minifters; who, like the animal fpirits betwixt the foul and body, participate fomewhat of both natures, and make the communication which is betwixt them. A king, who is just and moderate in his nature, who rules according to the laws, whom God made happy by forming the temper of his foul to the conftitution of his government, and who makes us happy, by affuming over us no other fovereignty than that wherein our welfare and liberty confifts: A prince, I fay, of fo excellent a character,' and fo fuitable to the wishes of all good men, could not better have conveyed himself into his people's apprehenfions, than in your Lordfhip's perfon; who fo lively exprefs the fame virtues, that you feem not fo much a copy, as an emanation of him. Moderation is doubtlefs an establishment of greatness; but there is a steadiness of temper, which is likewife requifite in a minifter of state: So equal a mixture of both virtues, that he may ftand like an ifthmus betwixt the two encroaching feas of arbitrary power and lawlefs anarchy. The undertaking would be difficult to any but an extraordinary genius, to ftand at the line, and to divide the limits; to pay what is due to the great reprefentative of the nation, and neither to inhance, nor to yield up, the undoubted prerogatives of the crown. Thefe, my Lord, are the proper virtues of a noble Englishman, as indeed they are properly English virtues: no people in the world being capable of ufing them, but we who have the happiness to be born under fo equal, and fo well-pois'd a goverment: a government which has all the advantages of liberty beyond a common-wealth, and all the marks of kingly fovereignty, without the danger of a tyranny. Both my nature, as I am an Englishman, and my reafon, as I am a man, have bred in me a loathing to that fpecious name of a republic; that mock appearance of a liberty, where all who have not part in the government, are flaves; and flaves they are of a viler note than fuch as are fubjects to an abfolute dominion. For no chriftian monarchy is fo abfolute, but 'tis circumfcribed with laws: but when the executive power is in the law- makers, there is no farther check upon them; and the people muft fuffer without a remedy, because they are oppreffed by their reprefentatives. If I must ferve, the

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