Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/386

378 syllable: the weight of his charge lies here; that such an author as the Examiner, should presume, by certain innuendoes, to accuse any great persons of such a crime. My business, in those papers, was to represent facts; and I was as spaiing as possible of reflecting upon particular persons: but the mischief is, that the readers have always found names to tally with those facts; and I know no remedy for this. As for instance, in the case here before us. An under clerk in the secretary's office, of fifty pounds a year, is discovered to hold correspondence with France, and apprehended by his master's order, before he could have opportunity to make his escape by the private warning of a certain person, a professed enemy to the secretary. The criminal is condemned to die. It is found, upon his trial, that he was a poor profligate fellow: the secretary, at that time, was under the mortal hatred of a violent prevailing party, who dreaded him for his great abilities, and his avowed design to break their destructive measures.

It was very well known, that a secretary of state has little or no intercourse with the lower clerks, but with the under secretaries, who are the more immediate masters of those clerks, and are, and ought to be, as they then were, gentlemen of worth: however, it would pass well enough in the world, that Gregg was employed in Mr. secretary Harley's office, and was consequently one of his clerks, which would be ground enough to build upon it what suggestions they pleased. Then for the criminal, he was needy and vicious: he owed his death to the secretary's watchful pursuit of him, and would therefore