Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/87

Rh it is modestly presumed all over the world, that they scarce need any reward for their virtue, but their virtue alone.

I have often been at a loss for the cause of this odd destiny, that attends the Irish catholicks in all foreign courts and countries. They are the first called upon for any service that requires fidelity and resolution; the last distinguished with any eminent marks of honour or advantage. Let them behave ever so well, if it be thought fit to give them any recompense, it is always inferiour to what might be judged suliicient for men of any other country in the like case. Whatever others might be entitled to grumble at as a reward, must be received by them as a gift. Whatever is taken from them, either at home or abroad, is lawful prize. Their zeal, in regard of loyalty and religion, has been so cruelly misrepresented, and their unparallelled sufferings so involved in shades, or clad with an air of justice, that they are become a by-word in all countries alike; which are perfectly agreed to keep them low, after the example of their own princes, upon a presumption that they could not have been used so extremely ill, if they had not in some measure deserved it. A long and perpetual train of misfortunes has a strange tendency toward putting a people in the wrong; or, at best, making them the objects of ridicule. The Irish, for having been steady to their principles, and not as cunning knaves as the two neighbouring nations, have groaned, during the two last centuries, under all the weight of injustice, calumny, and tyranny, of which there is no example, in equal circumstances, to be shown in any history of the universe. All this calumny has been sounded into the ears