Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/169

Rh must be a quarrelsome people, or live among very bad neighbours, and that our generals must needs be richer than our kings. He asked what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet. Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a free people. He said, if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man's house, might not better be defended by himself, his children, and family, than by half a dozen rascals, picked up at a venture in the streets, for small wages, who might get a hundred times more, by cutting their throats.

He laughed at my odd kind of arithmetick, (as he was pleased to call it) in reckoning the numbers of our people, by a computation drawn from the several sects among us, in religion and politicks. He said, he knew no reason why those, who entertain opinions prejudicial to the publick, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And as it was tyranny in any government, to require the first, so it was weakness, not to enforce the second: for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials.

He observed, that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed: whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes; whether mean