Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/339

Rh : nor even could this have been expected, if several great lords, who were always reputed of the other party, had not only complied, but been highly instrumental in the change; as the dukes of Shrewsbury and Argyll, the earls of Peterborough, Rivers, and some others, who certainly came into the queen's measures upon other motives than that of party. Now, since the government of England cannot go on while the two houses of parliament are in opposition to each other; and that the people whenever they acted freely, would infallibly return a majority of church men; one of these two things was of necessity to be done: either, first, to dissolve that parliament, and call another of the whig stamp, by force of a prodigious expense, which would be neither decent nor safe, and, perhaps, at that time, hardly feasible: or else, to turn the balance in the house of lords; which, after the success of lord Nottingham's vote, was not otherwise to be done, than by creating a sufficient number of peers, in order at once to make the queen and her people easy upon that article, for the rest of her reign. And this I should be willing to think was the treasurer's meaning, when he advised those advancements; which, however, I confess, I did very much dislike.

But if, after all I have said, my conjecture should happen to be wrong, yet I do not see how the treasurer can justly be blamed, for preserving his cause, his friends, and himself, from unavoidable ruin, by an expedient allowed on all hands to be lawful. Perhaps, he was brought under that necessity by the want of proper management: but, when that necessity appeared, he could not act otherwise