Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/160

146 fraternity (dealers in words), to write an encomium upon Such. But, whatever changes our language may undergo (and every thing that is English is given to change), this happy word is sure to live in your immortal preface. Your lordship does not end yet; but, to crown all, has another such in reserve, where you tell the world, "We were just entering on the ways that lead to such a peace as would have answered all our prayers," &c. Now, perhaps, some snarling tory might impertinently inquire, when we might have expected such a peace? I answer, when the Dutch could get nothing by the war, nor we whigs lose any thing by a peace; or, to speak in plain terms (for every one knows I am a free speaker as well as a freethinker), when we had exhausted all the nation's treasure (which every body knows could not have been long first), and so far enriched ourselves, and beggared our fellow subjects, as to bring them under a necessity of submitting to what conditions we should think fit to impose; and this too we should have effected, if we had continued in power. But, alas I just in that critical juncture, when (as we thought) our designs were ripe for execution, the scene changed: "God, for our sins," as your lordship wisely observes, "permitted the spirit of discord" (that is, the doctrine of obedience and submission to princes) "to go forth, and, by troubling the camp, the city, and the country (and O that it had spared the places sacred to his worship!) to spoil, for a time, this beautiful and pleasing prospect, and give us in its stead, I know not what . . . . . ." O exquisite! how pathetically does your lordship complain of the downfall of whiggism,