Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 16.djvu/317

Rh ill-will at us can find time and power to prevent it. All that a stubborn ally can then expect, is, time to come in, and accept those terms which himself once thought reasonable. The present age will soon taste the sweets of such conduct; and posterity as highly applaud it. Only they who now rail and calumniate, will do so still, and who are disposed to give every thing the same treatment which makes for our safety and welfare, and spoils their game of disorder and confusion.

It is true, the present stagnation of affairs is accounted for another way; and the party give out, that France begins to draw back, and would explain several articles upon us: but the authors of this forgery know very well I do not miscal it; and are conscious to the criminal reasons why it is with so much industry bandied about. France rather enlarges her offers, than abates or recedes from them: so happy are we in finding our most inveterate and ungenerous enemies within our own bowels! The whigs, according to custom, may chuckle and solace themselves with the visionary hopes of coming mischief; and imagine they are grown formidable, because they are to be humoured in their extravagances, and to be paid for their perverseness. Let them go on to glory in their projected schemes of government, and the blessed effects they have produced in the world. It was not enough for them to make obedience the duty of the sovereign, but this obedience must at length be made passive; and that nonresistance may not wholly vanish from among the virtues, since the subject is weary of it, they would fairly make it over to their monarch. The compact between prince and people is supposed to be Rh