Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/290

282 temperance, because they are no physicians. Examine all this author's writings, and then point me out a divine who knows less of the constitution of England than he; witness those many egregious blunders in his late papers, where he pretended to dabble in the subject.

But the clergy have, it seems, imbibed their notions of power and obedience, abhorrent from our laws, from the pompous ideas of imperial greatness, and the submission to absolute emperors. This is gross ignorance, below a schoolboy in his Lucius Florus. The Roman history, wherein lads are instructed, reached little above eight hundred years, and the authors do every where instill republican principles; and from the account of nine in twelve of the first emperors, we learn to have a detestation against tyranny. The Greeks carry this point yet a great deal higher, which none can be ignorant of, who has read or heard them quoted. This gave Hobbes the occasion of advancing a position directly contrary; that the youth of England were corrupted in their political principles, by reading the histories of Rome and Greece; which, having been written under republicks, taught the readers to have ill notions of monarchy. In this assertion there was something specious, but that advanced by the Crisis, could only issue from the profoundest ignorance.

But, would you know his scheme of education for young gentlemen at the university? it is, that they should spend their time in perusing those acts of parliament, whereof his pamphlet is an extract, which if it had been done, the kingdom would not be in its present condition, but every member sent into the world