Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/301

Rh be one grain the better by exposing its puerilities.

I shall therefore only remark upon this particular, that the frauds and corruptions in most other arts and sciences, as law, physick (I shall proceed no farther) are usually much more plausibly defended, than in that of politicks; whether it be, that, by a kind of fatality, the vindication of a corrupt minister is always left to the management of the meanest and most prostitute writers; or whether it be, that the effects of a wicked or unskilful administration, are more publick, visible, pernicious, and universal: Whereas the mistakes in other sciences are often matters that affect only speculation; or at worst, the bad consequences fall upon few and private persons. A nation is quickly sensible of the miseries it feels, and little comforted by knowing what account it turns to by the wealth, the power, the honours conferred on those who sit at the helm, or the salaries paid to their penmen; while the body of the people is sunk into poverty and despair. A Frenchman in his wooden shoes, may, from the vanity of his nation, and the constitution of that government, conceive some imaginary pleasure in boasting the grandeur of his monarch; in the midst of his own slavery: but a freeborn Englishman, with all his loyalty, can find little satisfaction at a minister overgrown in wealth and power, from the lowest degree of want and contempt; when that power or wealth are drawn from the bowels and blood of the nation, for which every fellow subject is a sufferer, except the great man himself, his family, and his pensioners. I mean such a minister (if there has ever been such a one) whose whole Rh