Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/530

518 habit of setting out with free and proceeding to slavish principles, is so common, that a contrary case, rare, if not singular, is first exhibited to the reader. Dean Swift, in his prime, was a tory, a statesman, a priest of the high church party, and a violent opponent of the whig principles. In his retirement, uninfluenced by ambition, this profound politician sent to his friend an abstract of his political opinions, to be found in Pope's works, vol. 6. p. 120, which is transcribed as an evidence, both of the force of passions and circumstances upon our current opinions, and of a concurrence between this able man when uninfluenced by these passions and circumstances, and several important doctrines of these essays.

"I had," says Swift, "a mortal antipathy against standing armies in times of peace; because I always took standing armies to be only servants hired by the master of the family for keeping his own children in slavery; and because conceived that a prince who would not think himself secure without mercenary troops, must needs have a separate interest from that of his subjects. Although I am not ignorant of those arbitrary necessities which a corrupted ministry can create, for keeping forces to support a faction against the publick interest."

"As to parliaments, I adored the wisdom of that Gothick institution, which made them annual; and I was confident our liberty could never be placed upon a firm foundation until that ancient law was restored among us. For e who sees not, that when such assemblies are permitted to have a longer duration, there grows up a commerce of corruption between the ministry and the deputies, wherein they both find their accounts, or to the manifest danger of liberty? Which traffick would neither answer the design nor expense, if parliaments met once a year."

I ever abominated that scheme of politicks (now about thirty years old) of setting up a monied interest in opposition to the landed. For I conceived, there could