Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/252

240 forbid I should live to see. In short, the whole nation is so abandoned and corrupt, that the crown can never fail of a majority in both houses of parliament; he makes them all in one house, and he chooses above half in the other. Four and twenty bishops and sixteen Scotch lords, is a terrible weight in one; forty-five from one country, beside the west of England, and all the government boroughs, is a dreadful number in the other. Were his majesty inclined to morrow to declare his body coachman his first minister, it would do just as well, and the wheels of government would move as easily as they do with the sagacious driver, who now sits in the box. Parts and abilities are not in the least wanting to conduct affairs the coachman knows how to feed his cattle, and the other feeds the beasts in his service, and this is all the skill that is necessary in either case. Are not these sufficient difficulties and discouragements, if there were no others; and would any man struggle against corruption, when he knows, that if he is ever near defeating it, those who make use of it, only double the dose, and carry all their points farther, and with a higher hand, than perhaps they at first intended. Beside all this, I have had particular misfortunes and disappointments: I had a very near relation of great abilities, who was my fellow labourer in the publick cause: he is gone; I loved and esteemed him much, and perhaps wished to see him one day serving his country in some honourable station: no man was more capable of doing it, nor had better intentions for the publick service than himself; and I may truly say, that the many mortifications he met with, in ten or twelve years struggling in parliament, was the occasion of his death. I have lost likewise the