Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/295

Rh in their outer room, there ought always to attend some persons endowed with a great stock of credulity, a generation that thrives mightily in this soil and climate: he thinks a sufficient number of them may be picked up any where about the exchange: these are to circulate what the others coin; for no man spreads a lie with so good a grace as he that believes it: that the rule of the society be, to invent a lie, and sometimes two for every day; in the choice of which, great regard ought to be had to the weather, and the season of the year: your, or terrifying lies, do mighty well in November and December, but not so well in May and June, unless the easterly winds reign: that it ought to be penal for any body to talk of any thing but the lie of the day: that the society is to maintain a sufficient number of spies at court, and other places, to furnish hints and topicks for invention, and a general correspondence of all the market-towns for circulating their lies: that if any one of the society were observed to blush, or look out of countenance, or want a necessary circumstance in telling the lie, he ought to be expelled, and declared incapable: beside the roaring lies, there ought to be a private committee for whisperers, constituted of the ablest men of the society. Here the author makes a digression in praise of the whig party, for the right understanding and use of proof-lies. A proof-lie is like a proof-charge for a piece of ordnance, to try a standard credulity. Of such a nature he takes transubstantiation to be in the church of Rome, a proof-article, which if any one swallows, they are sure he will digest every thing else: therefore the whig party do wisely, to try the credulity of the people sometimes by swingers, that they may be able to judge, to . XVII.