Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/371

Rh understand a court very well for your time, and are well known to the minister on the other side. The consequence of which is, that it lies in my power to undo you, only by letting it be known at St. James's that you are perpetually sending me presents, and holding a constant correspondence with me by letters. Another unwary step of yours is inviting me to your house, which will render your election desperate, by making all your neighbour squires represent you as a person disaffected to the government. Thus I have you at my mercy on two accounts, unless you have some new court refinements to turn the guilt upon me. I wrote a long letter some weeks ago; but I could not find by the messenger of your last salmon that he knew any thing of that letter; for you take, in every circumstance, a special care that I may know nothing more than of a salmon being left at the deanery. Thus there is a secret commerce between your servant and my butler. The first writes a letter to the other says the carriage is paid, that the salmon weighs so much, and was sent by his master to me. If some of our patriots should happen to discover the management of this intrigue, they would inform the privy council, from which an order would be brought by a messenger to seize on the salmon, have it opened, and search all its entrails to find some letter of dangerous consequence to the state. I believe I told you in my former letter, that Mr. Lloyd, a clergyman, minister of Colrane, but who lives four miles from it, came to me upon his going to England, to see his old father in Chester, and from thence goes to London to wait upon the society. He showed me very ample credentials from the Rh