Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/369

Rh, almost to a man, excepting professed nonjurors, had conceived the utmost abhorrence of a popish successor; and as I have already observed, the scruple of conscience, upon the point of loyalty, was wholly confined to a few antiquated nonjurors, who lay starving in obscurity: so that, in order to have brought such an affair about in a parliamentary way, some years must have been employed to turn the bent of the nation, to have rendered one person odious, and another amiable; neither of which is to be soon compassed toward absent princes, unless by comparing them with those of whom we have had experience, which was not then the case.

The other circumstance was, the bad condition of the queen's health; her majesty growing every day more unwieldy, and the gout, with other disorders, increasing on her; so that whoever was near the court, for about the two last years of her reign, might boldly have fixed the period of her life to a very few months, without pretending to prophesy. And how little a time the ministers had, for so great a work as that of changing the succession of the crown, and how difficult the very attempt would have been, may be judged, from the umbrage taken by several lords of the church party, in the last year of her reign, who appeared under an apprehension that the very quarrels among the ministers, might possibly be of some disadvantage to the house of Hanover. And the universal claration