Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/439

Rh be careful; for all this is said in raillery; for you may easily remember, that when the town was first yielded to the queen, the whigs declare it was of no consequence at all, that the French could easily repair it after the demolition, or fortify another a few miles off, which would be of more advantage to them. So that what Mr. Steele tells you, of the prodigious benefit that will accrue to England by destroying this port, is only suited to present junctures and circumstances. For, if Dunkirk should now be represented as insignificant as when it was first put into her majesty's hands, it would signify nothing whether it were demolished or not, and consequently one principal topick of clamour would fall to the ground.

In Mr. Steele's answer to monsieur Tugghe's arguments against the demolishing of Dunkirk, I have not observed any thing that so much deserves your peculiar notice, as the great eloquence of your new member, and his wonderful faculty of varying his style, which he calls "proceeding like a man of great gravity and business," p. 31. He has ten arguments of Tugghe's to answer; and because he will not go in the old beaten road, like a parson of a parish, first, secondly, thirdly, &c. his manner is this:

In answer to the sieur's first. As to the sieur's second. As to his third. As to the sieur's fourth. As to Mr. deputy's fifth. As to the sieur's sixth. As to this agent's seventh. As to the sieur's eighth. As