Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/308

300 are so, we are ashamed to own the first, and cannot tell how to express the other. In a word it seems to me that all the writers are on one side, and all the railers on the other.

However, I do not pretend to assert that it is impossible for an ill minister to find men of wit, who maybe drawn, by a very valuable consideration, to undertake his defence: but the misfortune is, that the heads of such writers rebel against their hearts; their genius forsakes them, when they would offer to prostitute it to the service of injustice, corruption, party rage, and false representation of things and persons.

And this is the best argument I can offer in defence of great men, who have been of late so very unhappy in the choice of their paper-champions: although I cannot much commend their good husbandry, in those exorbitant payments, of twenty, and sixty guineas at a time, for a scurvy pamphlet; since the sort of work they require, is what will all come within the talents of any one, who has enjoyed the happiness of a very bad education, has kept the vilest company, is endowed with a servile spirit, is master of an empty purse, and a heart full of malice.

But, to speak the truth in soberness; it should seem a little hard, since the old whiggish principle has been recalled, of standing up for the liberty of the press, to a degree that no man, for several years past, durst venture out a thought, which did not square to a point, with the maxims and practices that then prevailed: I say, it is a little hard, that the vilest mercenaries should be countenanced, preferred, rewarded, for discharging their brutalities against men of honour, only upon a bare conjecture.

If it should happen that these profligates have tacked