Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/131

Rh of its climate and soil, if that happiness be not rather owing even to those very disadvantages. What is then to be done, if this reflection must fix on two countries, which will be most ready to take offence, and which, of all others, it will be least prudent or safe to offend?

But there is one circumstance yet more dangerous and lamentable: for if, according to the postulatum already laid down, the higher quality any youth is of, he is in greater likelihood to be worse educated; it behoves me to dread, and keep far from the verge of scandalum magnatum.

Retracting therefore that hazardous postulatum, I shall venture no farther at present than to say, that perhaps some additional care in educating the sons of nobility, and principal gentry, might not be ill employed. If this be not delivered with softness enough, I must for the future be silent.

In the mean time, let me ask only two questions, which relate to England. I ask first, how it comes about, that for above sixty years past the chief conduct of affairs has been generally placed in the hands of new men, with very few exceptions? The noblest blood of England having been shed in the grand rebellion, many great families became extinct, or were supported only by minors: when the king was restored, very few of those lords remained, who began, or at least had improved their education under the reigns of king James, or king Charles I, of which lords the two principal were the marquis of Ormond, and the earl of Southampton. The minors had, during the rebellion and usurpation, either received too much tincture of bad principles from those natick