Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/309

Rh serving this union," he argues like himself. "The late kingdom of Scotland (says he) had as numerous a nobility as England," &c. They had indeed; and to that we owe one of the great and necessary evils of the union, upon the foot it now stands. Their nobility is indeed so numerous, that the whole revenues of their country would be hardly able to maintain them, according to the dignity of their titles; and what is infinitely worse, they are never likely to be extinct until the last period of all things; because the greatest part of them descend to heirs general, I imagine a person of quality prevailed on to many a woman much his inferiour, and without a groat to her fortune, and her friends arguing she was as good as her husband, because she brought him as numerous a family of relations and servants, as she found in his house. Scotland, in the taxes, is obliged to contribute one penny for every forty pence laid upon England; and the representatives they send to parliament are about a thirteenth. Every other Scotch peer has all the privileges of an English one, except that of sitting in parliament, and even precedence before all of the same title that shall be created for the time to come. The pensions and employments possessed by the natives of that country now among us, do amount to more than the whole body of their nobility ever spent at home; and all the money they raise upon the publick, is hardly sufficient to defray their civil and military lists. I could point out some, with great titles, who affected to appear very vigorous for dissolving the union, although their whole revenues before that period, would have ill maintained a Welsh justice of peace; and have since gathered