Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/276

268 most of them dead, the rest antiquated or poor. Six and twenty years have almost past since the revolution, and the bulk of those who are now most in action either at court, in parliament, or publick offices, were then boys at school or the universities, and look upon that great change to have happened during a period of time for which they are not accountable. The logick of the highest tories is now, that this was the establishment they found, as soon as they arrived at a capacity of judging; that they had no hand in turning out the late king, and therefore had no crime to answer for, if it were any: that the inheritance to the crown is fixed in pursuance of laws made ever since their remembrance, by which all papists are excluded, and they have no other rule to go by: that they will no more dispute king William the Third's title, than king William the First's; since they must have recourse to history for both: that they have been instructed in the doctrines of passive obedience, non-resistance, and hereditary rights and find them all necessary for preserving the present establishment in church and state, and for continuing the succession in the house of Hanover, and must in their own opinion renounce all those doctrines by setting up any other title to the crown. This, I say, seems to be the political creed of all the high principled men I have for some time met with of forty years old and under; which although I do not pretend to justify in every part, yet I am sure it sets the protestant succession upon a much firmer foundation, than all the indigested schemes of those who profess to act upon what they call revolution principles. Neither