Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/54

46 the rest of her lifetime. This promotion was so ordered, that a third part, were of those, on whom, or their posterity, the peerage would naturally devolve; and the rest were such, whose merit, birth, and fortune, could admit of no exception.

The adverse party, being thus driven down by open force, had nothing left but to complain, which they loudly did: "That it was a pernicious example set for ill princes to follow, who, by the same rule, might make at any time a hundred as well as twelve, and by these means become masters of the house of lords whenever they pleased; which would be dangerous to our liberties." To this it was answered, "That ill princes seldom trouble themiselves to look for precedents; that men of great estates will not be less fond of preserving their liberties, when they are created peers; that in such a government as this, where the prince holds the balance between two great powers, the nobility and people, it is the very nature of his office to remove from one scale into the other, or sometimes put his own weight in the lightest, so as to bring both to an equilibrium: and lastly, that the other party, had been above twenty years, corrupting the nobility, with republican principles, which nothing but the royal prerogative could hinder from overspreading us."

The conformity bill abovementioned was prepared by