Politics & Power Quote by George Farquhar

Farquhar is selling a swaggering fantasy of self-made manhood, and he does it with the brisk confidence of someone who knows the audience wants to be flattered. "Intrinsic value" sounds like philosophy, but here it functions like a costume: a moral alibi for ambition. These men don’t just have money; they have worth that can’t be touched by "accidents in life" or "revolutions in government". It’s a neat rhetorical trick in an era when careers could be wrecked by patronage shifts, regime change, or simple bad luck. The line pretends to transcend politics while quietly admitting politics is everywhere.

The subtext is class anxiety wearing a grin. Farquhar writes in the Restoration/early Augustan world where credit, commerce, and social mobility were rising, and traditional rank was being renegotiated in public. "Strike our fortunes out of ourselves" borrows the language of force and craft, turning economic success into a kind of masculine labor of will. It’s not just that they can earn; they can earn without needing anyone. That’s the dream of independence, pitched to people who know how dependent they actually are.

Then comes the clincher: "heads to get money, and hearts to spend it". Intelligence without generosity would read as grasping; generosity without intelligence would read as foolish. Farquhar stitches the two together to produce an ideal gentleman for a new money age: shrewd enough to win, warm enough to look noble doing it. The charm is also the tell. It’s an ethos built to justify getting rich and staying likable.