Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/194

182 upon meeting of the parliament held by the earl of Pembroke, they quickly reassumed their wonted courage and confidence, and made no doubt but they should either procure an absolute repeal thereof, or get it so far relaxed, as that they might be admitted to offices of military trust: to this they apprehended themselves encouraged by a paragraph in his excellency's speech to both houses (which they applied to themselves) which was, "that the queen would be glad of any expedient, for strengthening the interest of her protestant subjects of Ireland."

The advocates for the dissenters immediately took hold of this handle; and, in order to prepare the way for this expedient, insisting boldly upon their merit and loyalty, charged the church with persecution, and extolled their signal behaviour in the late revolution to that degree, as if by their singular prowess they had saved the nation.

But all this was only to prepare the way for the grand engine, which was forming to beat down this law; and that was their expedient addresses.

The first of this kind was, from a provincial synod of the northern dissenters, beginning with high encomiums upon themselves, and as high demands from the publick, "for their untainted loyalty in all turns of government, which," they said, "was the natural consequence of their known principles;" expressions, which, had they been applied to them by their adversaries, must have been understood as spoken ironically; and, indeed, to have been the greatest sarcasm imaginable upon them (especially when we consider the insolent treatment given