The Year of the Moat

As the year of the MPs' expenses draws to a close, I find the following in that seventeenth-century political trimmer, George Savile, Marquis of Halifax: "To the question, what shall we do to be saved in this world? there is no answer but this, Look to your Moat." (A Rough Draft of a New Model at Sea, with a nod, I think, to, er, the New Model Parliament)