Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/72

64 custom of drinking to the damnation or confusion of any person whatsoever.

Such desperate acts, and the opinions infused along with them into heads already inflamed by youth and wine, are enough to scatter madness and sedition through a whole camp. So seldom upon their knees to pray, and so often to curse! this is not properly atheism, but a sort of antireligion prescribed by the devil, and which an atheist of common sense would scorn as an absurdity. I have heard it mentioned as a common practice last autumn, somewhere or other, to drink damnation and confusion (and this with circumstances very aggravating and horrid) to the new ministry, and to those who had any hand in turning out the old; that is to say, to those persons whom her majesty has thought fit to employ in her greatest affairs, with something more than a glance against the queen herself. And if it be true, that these orgies were attended with certain doubtful words of standing by their general, who without question abhorred them, let any man consider the consequence of such dispositions, if they should happen to spread. I could only wish, for the honour of the army, as well as of the queen and ministry, that a remedy had been applied to the disease, in the place and time where it grew. If men of such principles were able to propagate them in a camp, and were sure of a general for life, who had any tincture of ambition, we might soon bid farewel to ministers and parliaments, whether new or old.

I am only sorry, such an accident has happened toward the close of a war; when it is chiefly the interest of those gentlemen, who have posts in the army,