Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/140

104 body of the clergy, without any exception, would unite the church, as one man, to oppose them; and that I doubted his lordship's friends did not consider the consequence of this. My lord Somers, in appearance, entered very warmly into the same opinion, and said very much of the endeavours he had often used, to redress the evil I complained of. This his lordship, as well as my lord Halifax, to whom I have talked in the same manner, can very well remember, and I have indeed been told, by an honourable gentleman of the same party, that both their lordships, about the time of lord Godolphin's removal, did, upon occasion, call to mind what I had said to them five years before."

Hence it appears evidently, that though Swift agreed with the whigs in his political principles, he differed totally from them in those which regarded the church, and therefore was considered by them only as a half-brother; on which account they were not very solicitous to give him any preferment, though they wished to keep upon good terms with him, by making many fair promises, which it seems they had no intention to perform. Of this we have already seen instances in the affair of his secretaryship to Vienna, and the bishoprick of Virginia. Stung with this treatment, he broke off all connexion with them long before he had access to any of the leaders of the tory party, and while the whigs were yet in the plenitude of power. Nay, he went farther, and published several pieces in opposition to their measures. Of which take the following account, given by himself in his Memoirs, &c. "I mentioned these insignificant particulars, as it will be easily judged, "for