Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/195

Rh given to her late majesty in the very same address;) for, immediately after they pass this compliment upon themselves, they tell her majesty, they deeply regret the sacramental test; and frankly declared, that neither the gentlemen nor people of their persuasion could (they must mean would) serve her, whatever exigences might arise, unless that law was repealed.

The managers for the kirk, following this precedent, endeavoured to obtain addresses to the same purpose from the corporations; and though they proved unsuccessful in most, they procured them from our most considerable conforming corporations; and that too at a critical juncture, when numbers of Scotch presbyterians, who had deserved well in the affair of the union, and could not be rewarded in England (where the test act was in force), stood ready to overrun our preferments as soon as the test should be repealed in Ireland.

But, after all, when it came to a decisive trial in the house of commons, the dissenters were defeated.

When the managers found the house of commons could not be brought into that scheme of an expedient, to be offered by them; their refinement upon this was, to move for an address, "That the house would accept of an expedient from her majesty;" but this also was rejected; for, by this project, the managers would have led the queen into this dilemma, either to disoblige the whole body of the dissenters, by refusing to name the expedient, or else to give up the conformists to the insults and incroachments of the dissenters, by the repeal of that law, which was declared by the house of lords to be the great security Rh