Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/147

Rh to the guidance of their own opinion, would heartily concur to an entire resumption of those grants; others assure me they could name a dozen: yet, upon the hope of weakening the court, perplexing the ministry, and shaking the lord treasurer's credit in the house of commons, you went on so unanimously, that I do not hear there was one single negative in your whole list, nor above one whig lord guilty of a suspicious absence, who, being much in your lordship's circumstances, of a great patrimonial estate, and under no obligations to either side, did not think himself bound to forward a point, driven on merely to make the crown uneasy at this juncture, while it no way affected his principles as a whig, and which I am told was directly against his private judgment. How he has since been treated as an apostate and betrayer of his friends, by some of the leaders and their deputies among you, I hope your lordship is ashamed to reflect on: nor do I take such open and sudden declarations to be very wise, unless you already despair of his return, which, I think, after such usage, you justly may. For the rest, I doubt, your lordship's friends have missed every end they proposed to themselves in rejecting that bill. My lord treasurer's credit is not any way lessened in the house of commons. In your own house, you have been very far from making a division among the queen's friends; as appeared manifestly a few days ago, when you lost your vote by so great a majority, and disappointed those who had been encouraged to hire places, upon certain expectations of seeing a parade to the Tower. Lastly, it may probably happen,

Rh