Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/215

Rh Perhaps you will tell me, as some have already had the weakness, that it is of little importance to either party, to have a speaker of their side, his business being only to take the sense of the house, and report it; that you often, at committees, put an able speaker into the chair, on purpose to prevent him from stopping a bill. Why, if it were no more than this, I believe I should hardly choose even among my footmen, such a one to deliver a message, whose interest and opinion led him to wish it might miscarry. But I remember to have heard colonel Birch of Herefordshire say, "That he was a very sorry speaker, whose single vote was not better than fifty common ones." I am sure it is reckoned in England, the first great test of the prevalency of either party in the house. Sir Thomas Lyttelton thought that a house of commons with a stinking breath (supposing the speaker to be the mouth) would go near to infect every thing within the walls, and a great deal without. It is the smallest part of an able speaker's business what he performs in the house; at least if he be in with the court, when it is hard to say, how many converts may be made, in a circle of dinners or private cabals. And you and I easily call to mind a gentleman in that station in England, who, by his own arts, and personal credit, was able to draw over a majority, and change the whole power of a prevailing side, in a nice juncture of affairs, and make a parliament expire in one party, who had lived in another.

I am far from an inclination to multiply party causes; but surely the best of us, can with very ill grace make that an objection, who has not been so nice in matters of much less importance. Yet I have heard some persons of both sides gravely deliver themselves in