Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/339

Rh so material, as to weaken the consequences I draw from them.

After ten years war with perpetual success, to tell us it is yet impossible to have a good peace, is very surprising, and seems so different from what has ever happened in the world before, that a man of any party may be allowed suspecting, that we have been either ill used, or have not made the most of our victories, and might therefore desire to know where the difficulty lay. Then it is natural to inquire into our present condition; how long we shall be able to go on at this rate; what the consequences may be upon the present and future ages; and whether a peace, without that impracticable point which some people do so much insist on, be really ruinous in itself, or equally so, with the continuance of the war.

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