Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/168

154 so excellent a princess: but it has sometimes happened, by the connivance of good monarchs, that their people have been oppressed; and that perhaps might be your case in the late reign.

Gent. So much otherwise, that no annals can produce a reign freer from oppression. Our gracious queen "never accepted the persons of the wicked, nor overthrew the righteous in judgment. Whose ox or whose ass did she take? She was always ready to relieve, but never to oppress, the poor, the fatherless, and the afflicted. Her heart was not lifted up above her brethren; nor did she turn aside from the commandment, to the right or to the left." Her compassionate mind pitied even those countries which suffered by the power of her victorious arms. Where are the least effects of the pride and cruelty of queen Anne to be discovered? So impossible is it to brand her government with any instance of severity, that perhaps it may be more justly censured for excess of clemency; a clemency, the continuance whereof had once brought her into the utmost distress, till that tender regard, which she had always shown for the liberties of her subjects, taught them in return to struggle as hard for the liberty of their sovereign; even for that common right of all mankind, the liberty of choosing her own servants.

For. Give me leave to make another supposition. Princes sometimes turn liberality into profusion, squander their treasure, and empoverish their people. May nothing of this kind be laid to the charge of the deceased queen?

Gent. You cannot but have heard, that, when she came to the crown, she found a dangerous war prepared for her, in which it pleased God to bless her