Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/384

376 will they undertake to prove that it is pardonable on one side, and not on the other? Since the late change of ministry, I have observed many of that party take up a new style, and tell us, "That this way of personal reflection ought not to be endured; they could not approve of it; it was against charity and good manners." When the whigs were in power, they took special care to keep their adversaries silent; then all kind of falsehood and scurrility was doing good service to the cause, and detecting evil principles. Now, that the face of things is changed, and we have liberty to retort upon them, they are for calling down fire from Heaven upon us; though, by a sort of indulgence which they were strangers to, we allow them equal liberty of the press with ourselves; and they even now make greater use of it, against persons in the highest power and credit, than we do against those who have been discarded, for the most infamous abuse of both.

Who encouraged and rewarded the Observator and Review, for many years together, in charging the whole body of the clergy with the most odious crimes and opinions; in declaring all who took oaths to the government, and called themselves tories, to be worse than papists and nonjurors; in exposing the universities, as seminaries of the most pernicious principles in church and state; in defending the rebellion, and the murder of king Charles I, which they asserted to be altogether as justifiable as the late revolution? Is there a great man now in power, or in any credit with the queen, whom those worthy undertakers have not treated, by name, in the most ignominious manner? Even since this great change of