Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/543

 writers, he would have found that the sum was five hundred pounds; and that it was lent out, not in small sums from five shillings to five pounds, but from five pounds to ten. And though the doctor has guarded his paltry sum of five shillings, with an — I think — what apology can be made for conjecture, where certainty was so easily to be obtained? As to the cruelty he is charged with to his poor debtors, whatever report of that sort may have been raised in London, it certainly never was heard, of in Dublin; but when he adds, that, on this account, "The clamour against him was loud, and the resentment of the populace outrageous" — one cannot help being astonished at so confident an assertion, against a fact of such publick notoriety: for even the worst maligners of the dean allow, that no man ever possessed the love of the populace to so high a degree; and it is well known in Dublin, that no part of his conduct ever gained him so much popularity, as this well devised, well managed charity. If the doctor had any authority for this gross misrepresentation, he ought to have produced it; otherwise the scandal may be brought home to himself — the scandal not only of attempting to deprive Swift of the merit of such a noble institution, but by such misrepresentation, to place his character in a most odious light.

But of all the instances that occur throughout this work, of the strong bias in the doctor's mind, to place every thing with regard to Swift in the worst light, no one is more remarkable than the account he gives of the forged letters sent to the queen in the dean's name, to be found in the following passage; where speaking of the queen, he says — "I " know