Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/456

404 and infamy begins; or that a hundred criminal amours, were not as pardonable as half a score.

Beside those corruptions already mentioned, it would be endless to enumerate such as arise from the excess of play or gaming: the cheats, the quarrels, the oaths, and blasphemies, among the men; among the women, the neglect of houshold affairs, the unlimited freedoms, the undecent passion, and lastly, the known inlet to all lewdness, when after an ill run, the person must answer the defects of the purse, the rule on such occasions holding true in play, as it does in law; quod non habet in crumena, luat in corpore.

But all these are trifles in comparison, if we step into other scenes, and consider the fraud and cozenage of trading men and shopkeepers; that insatiable gulf of injustice and oppression, the law; the open traffick for all civil and military employments, (I wish it rested there) without the least regard to merit or qualifications; the corrupt management of men in office; the many detestable abuses in choosing those, who represent the people; with the management of interest and factions among the representatives: to which I must be bold to add, the ignorance of some of the lower clergy; the mean servile temper of others; the pert pragmatical demeanour of several young stagers in divinity, upon their first producing themselves into the world; with many other circumstances, needless, or rather invidious to mention; which falling in with the corruptions already related, have, however unjustly, almost rendered the whole order contemptible. This