Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/16

viii many great men, as well as the succeeding system of publick affairs in general, in the dean's history of the four last years of the queen's reign, to admit of a publication, in our times; and, with this poor insinuation, excused themselves, and satisfied the weakly well affected, in suppressing the manifestation of displeasing truths, of however great importance to society.

This manuscript has now fallen into the hands of a man, who never could associate with, or even approve, any of the parties or factions, that have differently distracted, it might be said disgraced, these kingdoms; because he has as yet known none, whose motives or rules of action were truth and the publick good alone; of one, who judges, that perjured magistrates of all denominations, and their most exalted minions, may be exposed, deprived, or cut off, by the fundamental laws of his country; and who, upon these principles, from his heart, approves, and glories in, the virtues of his predecessors, who revived the true spirit of the British polity, in laying aside a priest-ridden, a hen-pecked, tyrannical tool, who had overturned the political constitution of his country, and in reinstituting the dissolved body politick, by a revolution, supported by the laws of nature and the realm, as the only means of preserving the natural and legal, the civil and religious liberties of the members of the commonwealth.

Truth, in this man's estimation, can hurt no good cause. And falsehood and fraud, in religion and politicks, are ever to be detected, to be exploded.

Insinuations, that this history contained something injurious to the present establishment, and therefore necessary to be suppressed, serve better the purposes of