Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/14

6 shaken; and hence, great numbers find their profit in prolonging the war.

It is odd, that among a free trading people, as we call ourselves, there should so many be found to close in with those counsels, who have been ever averse from all overtures towards a peace: but yet there is no great mystery in the matter. Let any man observe the equipages in this town, he shall find the greater number of those who make a figure, to be a species of men quite different from any that were ever known before the Revolution; consisting either of generals and colonels, or of those, whose whole fortunes lie in funds and stocks; so that power, which according to the old maxim was used to follow land, is now gone over to money; and the country gentleman is in the condition of a young heir, out of whose estate a scrivener receives half the rents for interest, and has a mortgage on the whole; and is therefore always ready to feed his vices and extravagances, while there is any thing left. So that, if the war continue some years longer, a landed man will be little better than a farmer of a rack-rent to the army, and to the public funds.

It may perhaps be worth inquiring, from what beginnings, and by what steps, we have been brought into this desperate condition: and in search of this, we must run up as high as the Revolution.

Most of the nobility and gentry, who invited over the prince of Orange, or attended him in his expedition, were true lovers of their country, and its constitution in church and state; and were brought to yield to those breaches in the succession of the crown, out of a regard to the necessity of the dom,