Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/244

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AVING been forced in my papers to use the cant words of whig and tory, which have so often varied their significations for twenty years past, I think it necessary to say something of the several changes those two terms have undergone since that period; and then to tell the reader what I have always understood by each of them, since I undertook this work. I reckon that these sorts of conceited appellations, are usually invented by the vulgar; who, not troubling themselves to examine thoroughly the merits of a cause, are consequently the most violent partisans of what they espouse, and in their quarrels usually proceed to their beloved argument of calling names, until at length they light upon one which is sure to stick: and in time, each party grows proud of that appellation, which their adversaries at first intended for a reproach. Of this kind were the prasini and veneti, the guelfs and gibelines, hugonots and papists, roundheads and cavaliers, with many others of ancient and modern date. Among us, of late, there seems to have been a barrenness of invention in this point; the words whig and tory, although they be not much above thirty years old, having been pressed to the service Rh