Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/310

302 gathered more money, than ever any Scotchman, who had not travelled, could form an idea of.

I have only one thing more to say upon occasion of the union act; which is, that the author of the Crisis may be fairly proved, from his own citations, to be guilty of high treason. In a paper of his called the Englishman, of October 29, there is an advertisement about taking in subscriptions for printing the Crisis, where the title is published at length with the following clause, which the author thought fit to drop in the publication; ["and that no power on earth can bar, alter, or make void the present settlement of the crown, &c. By Richard Steele."] In his extract of an act of parliament made since the union, it appears to be high treason for any person by writing or printing to maintain and affirm, that the kings or queens of this realm, with and by the authority of parliament, are not able to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the crown, and the descent, limitation, inheritance, and the government thereof. This act being subsequent to the settlement of the crown confirmed at the union, it is probable some friend of the author advised him to leave out those treasonable words in the printed titlepage, which he had before published in the advertisement; and accordingly we find, that in the treatise itself he only offers it to every good subject's consideration, whether this article of the settlement of the crown is not as firm as the union itself, and as the settlement of episcopacy in England, &c. And he thinks the Scots understood it so, that the succession to the crown was never to be controverted. These