Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/96

90 sale of your ware as your predecessors, but consider that the nation, like a spendthrift heir, has run out: be likewise a little more continent in your tongues than you are at present, else the length of debates will spoil your dinners.

You housewifely good women who now preside over the confectionary (henceforth commissioners of the treasury) be so good as to dispense the sugar-plumbs of the government with a more impartial and frugal hand.

Ye prudes and censorious old maids (the hopes of the bench) exert but your usual talent of finding faults, and the laws will be strictly executed; only I would not have you proceed upon such slender evidences as you have done hitherto.

It is from you, eloquent oyster-merchants of Billingsgate, (just ready to be called to the bar, and quoifed like your sister serjeants) that we expect the shortening the time, and lessening the expences of lawsuits; for I think you are observed to bring your debates to a short issue; and even custom will restrain you from taking the oyster, and leaving only the shell to your client.

O ye physicians! who in the figure of old women are to clean the tripe in the markets, scour it as effectually as you have done that of your patients, and the town will fare most deliciously on Saturdays.

I cannot but congratulate human nature upon this happy transformation: the only expedient left to restore the liberties and tranquillity of mankind. This is so evident, that it is almost an affront to common sense to insist upon the proof: if there can be any such stupid creature as to doubt it, I desire he will make