Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/212

200 business? or the tradesman, by being obliged to shut up shop? And yet you all must know, that, in a civil war, no work can be carried on, nor any trade go forward. I hope you are not yet so stupid as to think, that people will build houses, buy rich furniture, or make up fine clothes, when we are all together by the ears, and nobody can tell to whose share they will fall at last. And if there be no buyers, you can have no employers. Merchants will not stock themselves with goods when there is no demand for them, to have their shops rifled, and their storehouses broken open and plundered, by one side or the other.

Indeed, my good friends and countrymen, let designing people say what they please, you will all be ruined in the struggle, let it end which way it will; and it well deserves your thoughts, whether it is worth your while to beggar yourselves and families, that the man's name upon the throne may be James instead of George. You will probably see neither of them while you live, nor be one penny the richer for the one or for the other; and, if you take my advice, you will accordingly not trouble your heads about them.

You may think it a fine thing, when you get drunk over your ale, to throw up your caps and cry, "Long live king James!" but it would be a wiser thing, to think how you will live yourselves, after you are beggared in his cause. Will he make good your losses? pay one man for the plundering of his warehouse, and another for the rifling of his shop? Will he give you money, think ye, to release your own and your wives' clothes which you must pawn for bread, because no work is stirring? Will he buy Rh