Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/297

Rh great, that he was consulted by the several corporations in all matters relative to trade, and chosen umpire of any differences among them, nor was there ever any appeal from his sentence. In a city where the police was perhaps on a worse footing than that of any in Europe, he in a great measure supplied the deficiency, by his own personal authority, taking notice of all publick nuisances, and seeing them removed. He assumed the office of censor general, which he rendered as formidable as that of ancient Rome. In short, what by the acknowledged superiority of his talents, his inflexible integrity, and his unwearied endeavours in serving the publick, he obtained such an ascendency over his countrymen, as perhaps no private citizen ever attained in any age or country. He was known over the whole kingdom by the title of  , given to him by way of preeminence, as it were by common consent; and when     was mentioned, it always carried with it the idea of the first and greatest man in the kingdom. said this;    did that; whatever he said or did was received as infallibly right; with the same degree of implicit credit given to it, as was paid to the Stagyrite of old, or to the modern popes. We may judge of the greatness of his influence, from a passage in a letter of lord Carteret to him, March 24, 17321732-3 [sic], who was at that time chief governor of Ireland, "I know by experience how much the city of Dublin thinks itself under your protection; and how strictly they used to obey all orders fulminated from the sovereignty of St. Patrick's." And in the postscript to another of March 24, 17361736-7 [sic], he says, "When people ask me how I governed Ireland? I say, that I pleased Dr. Swift." Rh