Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/288

280 in an age or two, be composed of mean, ignorant, fawning gownmen, humble suppliants and dependants upon the court for a morsel of bread, and ready to serve every turn that shall be demanded from them, in hopes of getting some commendam tacked to their sees; which must then be the trade, as it is now too much in England, to the great discouragement of the inferiour clergy. Neither is that practice without example among us.

It is now about eighty-five years since the passing of that limiting act, and there is but one instance in the memory of man, of a bishop's lease broken upon the plea of not being statutable; which, in every body's, opinion, could have been lost by no other person than he who was then tenant, and happened to be very ungracious in his county. In the present bishop of Meath's case, that plea did not avail, although the lease were notoriously unstatutable; the rent reserved being, as I have been told, not a seventh part of the real value; yet the jury, upon their oaths, very gravely found it to be according to the statute; and one of them was heard to say, that he would eat his shoes before he would give a verdict for the bishop. A very few more have made the same attempt with as little success. Every bishop, and other ecclesiastical body, reckon forty pounds in a hundred to be a reasonable half value; or if it be only a third part, it seldom or never breeds any ference