Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/291

Rh world thus instructed, since the revolution, would have been an advocate for our rights and liberties.

Here now is a project, for getting more money by the Crisis; to have it read by tutors in the universities. I thoroughly agree with him, that if our students had been thus employed for twenty years past, the kingdom had not been in its present condition; but we have too many of such proficients already among the young nobility and gentry, who have gathered up their politicks from chocolate houses and factious clubs; and who, if they had spent their time in hard study at Oxford or Cambridge, we might indeed have said, that the factious part of this kingdom had not been in its present condition, or have suffered themselves to be taught, that a few acts of parliament relating to the succession, are preferable to all other civil institutions whatsoever. Neither did I ever before hear, that an act of parliament relating to one particular point, could be called a civil institution.

He spends almost a quarto page in telling the clergy, that they will be certainly perjured if they bring in the pretender, whom they have abjured; and he wisely reminds them, that they have sworn without equivocation or mental reservation; otherwise the clergy might think, that as soon as they received the pretender, and turned papists, they would be free from their oath.

This honest, civil, ingenious gentleman, knows in his conscience, that there are not ten clergymen in England (excepsexcept [sic] nonjurors) who do not abhor the thoughts