Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/66

52 may not be charged with unfair quotation. By the company the doctor keeps, and the patrons he has chosen, I should think him an undoubted judge when people mean their own interest, but that I know, conversing only on one side generally gives our thoughts the same turn; just as the jaundice makes those that have it think all things yellow. This writer is prejudiced, and looks upon the rest of the world to be as self interested as those persons from whom he has taken his observation. But, if he means the present ministry, it is certain they could find their own interest in continuing the war as well as other people; their capacities are not less, nor their fortunes so great, neither need they be at a loss how to follow in a path so well beaten. Were they thus inclined, the way is open before them; the means that enriched their predecessors, gave them power, and made them almost necessary evils to the state, are now no longer a secret. Did their successors study their own interest with the same zeal as they do that of the publick, we should not have the doctor in these agonies for fear of a peace; things would be then as he would have them; it would be no longer a flame of straw, but a solid fire, likely to last as long as his poor countrymen had any materials to feed it. But I wonder he would talk of those who mean their own interest; in such an audience, especially before those "who fall in with their complaints," unless he had given it quite another turn, and bestowed some of his eloquence in showing, what he really thinks, that nothing in nature is so eligible as self interest, though purchased at the price of a lasting war, the blood and treasure of his fellow subjects, and the weal of his native country. Rh