Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 19.djvu/89

Rh and fidelity had the applause of whole theatres; but now nothing but Irish stupidity, and wretched small craft, will go down, even upon that of Dublin.

As all the honour the protestant Irish have acquired by their pen or their swords, passes generally for English; so the English, and their adherents in Ireland, have been in a long confederacy, before Clarendon appeared, to suppress or tarnish all the renown accruing to that unhappy country, from the worth and gallant actions of the catholicks. Their pens are ever dipped in bitterness and detraction; as if whatever could be reckoned valuable in that unfortunate people, were a lessening to the honour of the English nation, to which all their incense is addressed. However, though they have done horrible outrages to justice and veracity, by propagating lies, more or less, all over the world, they must be allowed to have acted with great sagacity, in favour of themselves. For if the Irish had not been represented, with uncommon industry, and in full cry, as a barbarous and stupid people, breakers of pubiick faith, cowards, murderers of the innocent, without any provocation, in every corner of their country; rebels to their lawful sovereigns, in whose defence they have ruined and annihilated themselves; all these attributes (except that of folly) had necessarily fallen to the share of England; and she must have been looked upon, by the whole universe, as the most lawless and inhuman tyrant upon the face of the earth. Yet all this villany ought not, in strict justice, to be imputed to her. She had not gone all those lengths of cruelty and iniquity, if she had not been under the force of Cromwell, and the influence of a Clarendon. In