Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/286

278, prevailed with their tenants to pay the price of so many barrels of corn, to be valued as the market went at two seasons (as I remember) in the year. For a barrel of corn is of a real intrinsick value, which gold and silver are not: and by this invention, these colleges have preserved a tolerable subsistence for their fellows and students to this day.

The present bishops will indeed be no sufferers by such a bill; because, their ages considered, they cannot expect to see any great decrease in the value of money; or at worst they can make it up in the fines, which will probably be greater than usual upon the change of leases into feefarms or lives; or without the power of obliging their tenants to a real half value. And, as I cannot well blame them for taking such advantages (considering the nature of humankind) when the question is only, whether the money shall be put into their own or another man's pocket; so they will never be excusable before God or man, if they do not to their death oppose, declare, and protest against any such bill, as must in its consequences complete the ruin of the church, and of their own order in this kingdom.

If the fortune of a private person be diminished by the weakness, or inadvertency of his ancestors, in letting leases for ever at low rents, the world lies open to his industry for purchasing more: but the church is barred by a dead hand; or, if it were otherwise, yet the custom of making bequests to it has been out of practice for almost two hundred vears, and a great deal directly contrary has been its fortune.

I have been assured by a person of some consequence, to whom I am likewise obliged for the count