Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/298

262 But great as his popularity was, it was chiefly confined to the middling, and lower class of mankind. To the former of these his chief applications were made, upon a maxim of his own, "That the little virtue left in the world, is chiefly to be found among the middle rank of mankind, who are neither allured out of her paths by ambition, nor driven by poverty."

All of this class he had secured almost to a man. And by the lower ranks, and rabble in general, he was reverenced almost to adoration. They were possessed with an enthusiastick love to his person, to protect which they would readily hazard their lives; yet on his appearance among them, they felt something like a religious awe, as if in the presence of one of a superiour order of beings. At the very sight of him, when engaged in any riotous proceedings, they would instantly fly different ways, like schoolboys at the approach of their master; and he has been often known, with a word, and lifting up his arm, to disperse mobs, that would have stood the brunt of the civil and military power united.

As to the upper class of makindmankind [sic], he looked upon them as incorrigible, and therefore had scarce any intercourse with them. He says himself, that he had little personal acquaintance with any lord spiritual or temporal in the kingdom; and he considered the members of the house of commons in general, as a set of venal prostitutes, who sacrificed their principles, and betrayed the interests of their country, to gratify their ambition or avarice. With these he lived in a continued state of warfare, making them feel severely the sharp stings of his satire; while they, on the other hand, dreading, and fore