Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/436

424 present in this place. But if she should be taken from me, I should most certainly yield to that strong desire, which I have long had, of secluding myself totally from the company and affairs of mankind; of leaving the management, even of my private affairs, to others; and of securing, by these means, for the rest of my life, an uninterrupted tenour of philosophical quiet.

I suppose you have seen some of those volumes of scurrility, which have been thrown into the world against Mr. Pulteney and myself, and the Craftsman, which gave occasion to them. I think, and it is the sense of all my friends, that the person who published the Final Answer, took a right turn, in a very nice and very provoking circumstance. To answer all the falsities, misrepresentations, and blunders, which a club of such scoundrels, as Arnall, Concanen, and other pensioners of the minister, crowd together, would have been equally tedious and ridiculous, and must have forced several things to be said, neither prudent, nor decent, nor perhaps strictly honourable to be said. To have explained some points, and to have stopped at others, would have given strength to that impertinent suggestion. Guilt alone is silent in the day of inquiry. It was therefore right to open no part of the scene of the late queen's reign, nor submit the passages of her administration, and the conduct of any of her ministers, to the examination of so vile a tribunal. This was Rh