Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/309

Rh, and there shooting their envenomed arrows." As to myself; I neither owe you vengeance, nor make use of such weapons: but it is your weakness, or ill-fortune, or perhaps the fault of your constitution, to convert wholesome remedies into poison; for you have received better and more frequent instructions than any minister of your age and country, if God had given you the grace to apply them.

I dare promise you the thanks of half the kingdom, if you please to perform the promise you have made of suffering the Craftsman and company, or whatever other infamous wretches and execrable villains you mean, to take their vengeance only on your own sacred ministerial person, without bringing any of your brethren, much less the most remote branch of the royal family, into the debate. This generous offer I suspected from the first; because there were never heard of so many, so unnecessary, and so severe prosecutions as you have promoted during your ministry, in a kingdom where the liberty of the press is so much pretended to be allowed. But, in reading a page or two, I found you thought it proper to explain away your grant; for there you tell us, that "these miscreants" (meaning the writers against you) are to remember that the laws have generous, less mild and merciful sentiments" than yourself; and into their secular hands the poor authors must be delivered to fines, prisons, pillories, whippings, and the gallows. Thus your promise of impunity, which began somewhat jesuitically, concludes with the mercy of a Spanish inquisitor.

If it should so happen that I am neither abettor, patron,