Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/165



HAT this inquiry is made by a private person, and not by her majesty's attorney general; and that such notorious offenders have met only with an expostulation, instead of an indictment; will at once be an everlasting proof of the lenity of the government, and of the unprovoked and groundless barbarity of such a proceeding. Amid the pious intercessions of her majesty's dutiful subjects at the throne of grace, for her health and recovery; that others of them should receive the news of her death with joy, and spread it with industry, will hardly appear probable to any, except to those who have been witnesses of such vile practices, not only in her majesty's capital city, but in several other places of the kingdom; not only near Charing cross, but at some other market crosses: that their passion on such an occasion should prove too unruly even for the caution demanded in the belief of news still uncertain, for the severity of the laws, and for the common decency that is due to the fall even of the greatest enemy: that not only those who were sharers of the common blessings of her mild government, but such as had been warmed by its kinder influences; not only those Rh