Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/210

198 My care is for the common people, the labourers, farmers, artificers, and tradesmen, of this nation; who are in danger of being deluded by their betters, and made tools of to serve their purposes, without any advantage to themselves. It is possible, that, among the lords and squires, one perhaps of a hundred would get something by a change: places and employments will be promised them, no doubt; and a few of those promises, perhaps, the French and Scotch friends of the pretender might give him leave to keep. But what are the poorer sort the better all this while? Will the labourer get one farthing a day more? Will the farmer's rent be lowered? Will the artificer be more employed, or better paid? Will the tradesman get more customers, or have fewer scores upon his books?

I have been bred in a careful way of life; and never ventured upon any project, without consulting my pillow first how much I should be a gainer in the upshot. I wish my good countrymen would do so too; and, before they grow fond of change, ask themselves this sober question, Whether it would better their condition if it were really brought about? If it would not, to what purpose do we wish it? If the poor labourer, when all is over, is to be a labourer still, and earn his groat a day as hardly as he did before; I cannot find why he should think it worth his while to venture a leg or an arm, and the gallows too into the bargain, to be just where he set out. If he must dig and delve when the pretender is settled on the throne, he had as good stick to it now, for any difference I can see.

I believe, my countrymen are not so mad as to imagine the pretender can, or will, give every one of them