Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/303

Rh this might have involved the two countries in a contest, which it was by no means the interest of a minister to engage in.

But, whatever gratification it might have been to his ambitious spirit, to see himself raised by the voluntary suffrages of his countrymen, to a rank beyond the power of monarchs to bestow; to find himself considered by all as the first man in the realm; the general object of veneration to all who wished well to their country, and of dread to those who betrayed its interests; yet he was far from being at all satisfied with his situation. The load of oppression under which Ireland groaned, from the tyrannick system of government over that country, established by the false politicks of England; the base corruption of some of the principal natives, who sacrificed the publick interests to their private views; the supineness of others arising from despondency; the general infatuation of the richer sort, in adopting certain modes and customs to the last degree ruinous to their country; together with the miseries of the poor, and the universal face of penury and distress that overspread a kingdom, on which nature had scattered her bounties with a lavish hand, and which properly used, might have rendered it one of the happiest regions in the world: all these acted as perpetual corrosives to the free and generous spirit of Swift, and kept him from possessing his soul in peace. We have many instances in his letters, written at that time, of the violent irritation of his mind on these accounts. In one of them he says, "I find myself disposed every year, or rather every month, to be more angry and revengeful; and my rage is so ignoble, that it descends even to resent " the