Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/161

Rh the kingdom, I cannot but hope, that the clergy of Ireland will have their share in your patronage. There is hardly a gentleman in the nation, who has not a near alliance with some of that body; and most of them who have sons, usually breed one of them to the church; although they have been of late years much discouraged, and discontented, by seeing strangers to the country almost perpetually taken into the greatest ecclesiastical preferments, and too often under governors very different from your excellency, the choice of persons was not to be accounted for either to prudence or justice.

The misfortune of having bishops perpetually from England, as it must needs quench the spirit of emulation among us to excel in learning and the study of divinity, so it produces another great discouragement, that those prelates usually draw after them colonies of sons, nephews, cousins, or old college companions, to whom they bestow the best preferments in their gift; and thus the young men sent into the church from the universisyuniversity [sic] here, have no better prospect than to be curates, or small country vicars, for life.

It will become so excellent a governor as you, a little to moderate this great partiality; wherein, as you will act with justice and reason, so you will gain the thanks and prayers of the whole nation, and take away one great cause of universal discontent. For, I believe your excellency will agree, that there is not another kingdom in Europe, where the natives (even those descended from the conquerors) have been treated, as if they were almost unqualified for any employment either in church or state. Rh