Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/105

Rh nothing from them with an air of resolution, out of pure modesty and grateful deference to his restorers. Though he was very hard put to it for the maintaining of his own family, and in no manner of condition to reward his fellow sufferers, he was advised, forsooth, only to recommend to his people, with great humility, what he should have demanded with authority for the redress of his and their former wrongs, and the farther security both of the temporal and spiritual establishment. The people, on the other hand, were grown so weary of their past servitude, and so charmed to see their lawful prince among them, that they waited only for his commands, to show their prompt obedience, and looked upon all his slight overtures, as things he had very little at heart.

In this giddy interval, the occasion of securing the rights both of church and state was lost: and the prime minister Clarendon, who was taken for the king's second self, profited by the mutual ecstacy of king and people, to advance the ends of his own avarice and ambition. While the prince, after so tedious an exile, gave himself up to the enjoyment of his present happiness, the subjects squared all the regulations of government, and the measures of justice, by the standard of Clarendon, whom they reckoned the faithful echo of their master's intentions. The plans of ecclesiastical and civil establishments were equally committed to his care; and he has left such a gangrene in both, as has since reached their very vitals. The church, it is true, was restored to her livings; but her pales were so ill fenced, that an inundation of all those sectaries, who had so lately born her down to the Rh