Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 11.djvu/239

Rh

MY LORD,

HAVE two or three times begun letters to your grace, and have torn what I writ, hoping I might send you something decisive about the peace. But all still continues to lie very loose, and I continue to be very desponding, although the people in affairs laugh at me for it. I have one plain maxim in dealing with those, who have more cunning, and less honesty than myself, which is, what we call keeping the staff in my own hand, and contriving that they shall trust me rather than I them. A man may reason until he is weary upon this proceeding of the Dutch. The soldiers tell me that the duke of Ormond could not possibly take possession of Dunkirk, since the foreign troops have refused to march, and that the states will not suffer us to go through their towns. But I had a whisper from one who should know best, that Dunkirk might now have been ours, if right methods had been taken. And another great man said to a friend of mine, above a fortnight ago, that the least wrong step on that side the water might have very ill consequences at this juncture. Rh