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Updated: May 23, 2025
A fool he was, if you will; but so is a sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality for a little crystal as big as a pigeon's egg, and called a diamond: so is a wealthy nobleman a fool, that will face danger or death, and spend half his life, and all his tranquillity, caballing for a blue ribbon; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath been known to pay ten thousand crowns for a tulip.
The Senate too liked the change; as by it they were released from the charge of buying votes, and from the shame of begging them: and so moderate was Tiberius, that of the twelve candidates he only reserved to himself the recommendation of four, to be accepted without opposition or caballing.
There seems to have been much improper conversation among the canons, for they are specially adjured in Christ to abstain from repeating immoral stories. Some of the canons who had made themselves notorious for quarrelling and caballing were to be debarred from promotion, and were commended to the Prior and Subprior for punishment.
In contradiction therefore to this general rule, and out of sincere love and well meaning to the public, give me leave to enumerate the abuses insensibly crept in among us, and the inconveniences daily arising from the insolence and intrigues of our servant-wenches, who, by their caballing together, have made their party so considerable, that everybody cries out against them; and yet, to verify the proverb, nobody has thought of, or at least proposed a remedy, although such an undertaking, mean as it seems to be, I hope will one day be thought worthy the consideration of our king, lords, and commons.
He affirmed, that while the English ministry, under the appearance of sincerity, imposed upon the French ambassador with false protestations, others diametrically opposite to these deceitful assurances of a speedy accommodation were actually carrying into execution in North America; that while the court of London employed every caballing art, and squandered away the subsidies of England, to instigate other powers against France, his most christain majesty did not even ask of these powers the succours which guarantees and defensive treaties authorised him to demand; but recommended to them such measures only as tended to their own peace and security; that while the English navy, by the most odious violences, and sometimes by the vilest artifices, made captures of French vessels navigating in full security under the safeguard of public faith, his most christian majesty released an English frigate taken by a French squadron; and British vessels traded to the ports of France without molestation.
To use the words of his biographer, "he attempted the doubly difficult task of reforming the gross improprieties, and reconciling some of the petty jealousies and quarrels with each other; in which he effected little else than making them unite in opposing him, and caballing to get rid of him in any way."
The Cameronians were about to take arms for the restoration of the house of Stewart, whom they regarded, with justice, as their oppressors; and the intrigues of the period presented the strange picture of papists, prelatists, and presbyterians, caballing among themselves against the English government, out of a common feeling that their country had been treated with injustice.
"I judged it likely to be so myself, sire," continued Wilton, "because I believed her to have been carried off by some persons belonging to a party of Jacobites who were known to be caballing against the government, though to what extent was not then ascertained." "And what made you judge," demanded the King, "that she had been carried off by these men?"
The scenes of those five or six years are like a series of dissolving views, or the changing combinations of a kaleidoscope; Condé and Turenne always on opposite sides for each changed his party as often as the other; battles prepared for by masquerades and theatricals, and celebrated on both sides with epigrams and songs; the wildest excesses of debauchery and vice practised by both sexes and all ranks in the State; archbishops fighting like gladiators, and intriguing like the vulgarest conspirators; princes imprisoned with a jest, and executions attended with cheers and laughter; the highest in the land caballing, cheating, and lying, but keeping a firm grasp of power: no country was ever so split into faction, or so denuded of great men.
Caballing with members of Congress for future contingency has become so interwoven with the practical course of our government, and so inevitably flows from the practice of canvassing by the members to fix on candidates for President and Vice-President, that to decline it is to pass a sentence of total exclusion. Be it so! Whatever talents I possess, that of intrigue is not among them.
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