Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/208

196 by their janissaries; and many other examples are easy to be found. If I were such a minister, I would go farther, and endeavour to be king myself. Such feats have happened among the petty tyrants of old Greece, and the worst that happened was only their being murdered for their pains.

I believe in my conscience that you have some mercenary end in all your endeavours to preserve the liberty of your country at the expense of your quiet, and of making all the villains in England your enemies. For you stand almost alone, and therefore are sure, if you succeed, to engross the whole glory of recovering a desperate constitution, given over by all its other physicians. May God work a miracle, by changing the hearts of an abandoned people, whose hearts are waxen gross, whose ears are dull of hearing, and whose eyes have been closed; and may he continue you as his chief, instrument, by whom this miracle is to be wrought.

I send this letter in a packet to Mr. Pope, and by a private hand. I pray God protect you against all your enemies; I mean those of your country; for you can have no other; and as you will never be weary of well doing, so may God give you long life and health the better to support you.

You are pleased to mention some volumes of what are called my works. I have looked on them very little. It is a great mortification to me, although I should not have been dissatisfied if such a thing had been done in England by booksellers agreeing among themselves. I never got a farthing by any thing I writ, except one about eight years ago, and that was by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me. Here the printers and booksellers have no property in their copies.