All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.

The first of these Law Is a Bottomless Pit (1712) introduced a simple allegory to explain the war. In 1713 Arbuthnot continued his political satire with Proposals for printing a very curious discourse. Arbuthnot was guardian to Peter the Wild Boy on his first arrival in London.

He is best remembered for his contributions to mathematics his membership in the Scriblerus Club (where he inspired both Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels book III and Alexander Pope's Peri Bathous Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus and possibly The Dunciad) and for inventing the figure of John Bull.