Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/101

N° 24. want of other phrases, to call the ruined party. They have taken up, since their fall, some real, and some pretended hopes. When the earl of Sunderland was discarded, they hoped her majesty would proceed no farther in the change of her ministry; and had the insolence to misrepresent her words to foreign states. They hoped, nobody durst advise the dissolution of the parliament. When this was done, and farther alterations made in court, they hoped, and endeavoured to ruin the credit of the nation. They likewise hoped, that we should have some terrible loss abroad, which would force us to unravel all, and begin again upon their bottom. But, of all their hopes, whether real or assumed, there is none more extraordinary than that in which they now would seem to place their whole confidence: that this great turn of affairs was only occasioned by a short madness of the people, from which they will recover in a little time, when their eyes are open, and they grow cool and sober enough to consider the truth of things, and how much they have been deceived. It is not improbable, that some few of the deepest sighted among these reasoners are well enough convinced, how vain all such hopes must be: but for the rest, the wisest of them seem to have been very ill judges of the people's dispositions; the want of which knowledge was a principal occasion to hasten their ruin; for surely, had they suspected which way the popular current inclined, they never would have run against it by that impeachment. I therefore conclude, they generally are so blind as to imagine some comfort from this fantastical opinion; that the people of England are at present distracted, but will shortly come to their senses again. For