Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/47

N° 17. brought here a man before you, my lords, who is a robber of the public treasure, an overturner of law and justice, and the disgrace as well as destruction of the Sicilian province; of whom if you shall determine with equity and due severity, your authority will remain entire, and upon such an establishment as it ought to be: but, if his great riches will be able to force their way through that religious reverence and truth, which become so awful an assembly; I shall however obtain thus much, that the defect will be laid where it ought; and that it shall not be objected, that the criminal was not produced, or that there wanted an orator to accuse him. This man, my lords, has publickly said, that those ought to be afraid of accusations, who have only robbed enough for their own support and maintenance; but that he has plundered sufficient to bribe numbers; and that nothing is so high or so holy, which money cannot corrupt. Take that support from him, and he can have no other left: for what eloquence will be able to defend a man, whose life has been tainted with so many scandalous vices, and who has been so long condemned by the universal opinion of the world? To pass over the foul stains and ignominy of his youth, his corrupt management in all employments he has born, his treachery and irreligion, his injustice and oppression: he has left of late such monuments of his villainies in Sicily, made such havock and confusion there, during his government, that the province cannot by any means be restored to its former state, and hardly recover itself at all, under many years, and by a long succession of good governors. Rh