Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/108

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OT many days ago I observed a knot of discontented gentlemen, cursing the tories to Hell for their uncharitableness in affirming, that if the late ministry had continued to this time, we should have had neither church nor monarchy left. They are usually so candid, as to call that the opinion of the party, which they hear in a coffee-house, or over a bottle, from some warm young people, whom it is odds but they have provoked to say more than they believed, by some positions as absurd and ridiculous of their own. And so it proved in this very instance: for, asking one of these gentlemen what it was that provoked those he had been disputing with to advance such a paradox; he assured me, in a very calm manner, it was nothing in the world but that himself, and some others of the company, had made it appear, that the design of the present parliament and ministry, was, to bring in popery, arbitrary power, and the pretender: which I take to be an