Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/297

Rh lies; how to know, when, where, and by whom, invented. Your Dutch, English, and French ware are amply distinguished from one another; an exchange lie from one coined at the other end of the town: great judgment is to be shown as to the place where the species is intended to circulate: very low and base coin will serve for Wapping: there are several coffeehouses, that have their particular stamps, which a judicious practitioner may easily know. All your great men have their proper phantateusticks. The author says he has attained, by study and application, to so great skill in this matter, that, bring him any lie, he can tell whose image it bears so truly, as the great man himself shall not have the face to deny it. The promissory lies of great men are known by shouldering, hugging, squeezing, smiling, bowing; and their lies in matter of fact, by immoderate swearing.

He spends the whole eleventh chapter on one simple question. Whether a lie is best contradicted by truth, or by another lie? The author says, that, considering the large extent of the cylindrical surface of the soul, and the great propensity to believe lies in the generality of mankind of late years, he thinks the properest contradiction to a lie, is another lie. For example; if it should be reported that the pretender was at London, one would not contradict it by saying, he never was in England; but you must prove by eye witnesses, that he came no farther than Greenwich, and then went back again. Thus if it be spread about, that a great person were dying of some disease, you must not say the truth, that they are in health, and never had such a disease, but that they are slowly recovering of it. So there was not long ago a Rh