Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/134

120 during the long power of your friends; so that it became necessary to turn the balance, by new creations; wherein, however, great care was taken to increase the peerage as little as possible, and to make a choice against which no objection could be raised, with relation to birth or fortune, or other qualifications requisite for so high an honour.

There is no man hath a greater veneration than I for that noble part of our legislature, whereof your lordship is a member; and I will venture to assert, that, supposing it possible for corruptions to go far in either assembly, yours is less liable to them than a house of commons. A standing senate of persons nobly born, of great patrimonial estates, and of pious learned prelates, is not easily perverted from intending the true interest of their prince and country; whereas we have found, by experience, that a corrupt ministry, at the head of a monied faction, is able to procure a majority of whom they please, to represent the people. But then, my lord, on the other side, if it has been so contrived, by time and management, that the majority of a standing senate is made up of those who wilfully or otherwise mistake the publick good; the cure, by common remedies, is as slow as the disease: whereas a good prince, in the hearts of his people, and at the head of a ministry who leaves them to their own free choice, cannot miss a good assembly of commons. Now, my lord, we do assert that this majority of yours has been the workmanship of about twenty years: