Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/286

278 hundred. Among those of all other callings or trades, who are able to maintain a son at the university, about treble that number. The sons of clergymen, bred to learning with any success, must, by reason of their parents poverty, be very inconsiderable, many of them being only admitted servitors in colleges, and consequently proving good for nothing: I shall therefore count them to be not above fourscore. But, to avoid fractions, I shall suppose there may possibly be a round number of two thousand male human creatures in England, including Wales, who have a tolerable share of reading and good sense. I include in this list all persons of superiour abilities, or great genius, or true judgment and taste, or of profound literature, who, I am confident, we may reckon to be at least five and twenty.

I am very glad to have this opportunity of doing an honour to my country, by a computation which I am afraid foreigners may conceive to be partial; when, out of only fifteen thousand families of lords and estated gentlemen, which may probably be their number, I suppose one in thirty to be tolerably educated, with a sufficient share of good sense. Perhaps the censure may be just. And therefore, upon cooler thoughts, to avoid all cavils, I shall reduce them to one thousand, which, at least, will be a number sufficient to fill both houses of parliament.

The daughters of great and rich families, computed after the same manner, will hardly amount to above half the number of the male: because the care of their education is either left entirely to their mothers, or they are sent to boarding-schools, or put into the hands of English or French governesses, and generally the worst that can be gotten for money. So that,