[Illustration]
This proposal was received with the utmost disapprobation by the whole
board. Bolgolam, the admiral, could not preserve his temper, but rising
up in fury, said he wondered how the secretary durst presume to give his
opinion for preserving the life of a traitor: that the services you had
performed were, by all true reasons of state, the great aggravation of
your crimes: that you, who extinguished the fire in that unprincipled
manner, might at another time inundate and drown the whole palace; and
the same strength, which enabled you to bring over the enemy's fleet,
might serve, upon the first discontent, to carry it back: that he had
good reasons to think you were a Big-endian in your heart; and, as
treason begins in the heart, before it appears in overt acts, so he
accused you as a traitor on that account, and therefore insisted you
should be put to death.
The treasurer was of the same opinion. He showed to what straits his
majesty's revenue was reduced, by the charge of maintaining you, which
would soon grow insupportable. That the secretary's expedient of putting
out your eyes was so far from being a remedy against this evil, that it
would probably increase it, as is manifest from the common practice of
blinding some sort of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew
sooner fat.
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