Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 6.djvu/92

70 of blinding some kind of fowls, after which they fed the faster, and grew sooner fat: that his sacred majesty and the council, who are your judges, were in their own consciences fully convinced of your guilt, which was a sufficient argument to condemn you to death, without the formal proofs required by the strict letter of the law.

But his imperial majesty, fully determined against capital punishment, was graciously pleased to say, that since the council thought the loss of your eyes too easy a censure, some other may be inflicted hereafter. And your friend the secretary, humbly desiring to be heard again, in answer to what the treasurer had objected, concerning the great charge his majesty was at in maintaining you, said, that his excellency, who had the sole disposal of the emperor's revenue, might easily provide against that evil, by gradually lessening your establishment; by which, for want of sufficient food, you will grow weak and faint, and lose your appetite, and consume in a few months; neither would the stench of your carcase be then so dangerous, when it should become more than half diminished; and immediately upon your death, five or six thousand of his majesty's subjects might in two or three days cut your flesh from your bones, take it away by cart-loads, and bury it in distant parts to prevent infection, leaving the skeleton as a monument of admiration to posterity.

Thus, by the great friendship of the secretary, the whole affair was compromised. It was strictly enjoined, that the project of starving you by degrees, should be kept a secret, but the sentence of putting out your eyes, was entered on the books; none dissenting, except Bolgolam the admiral, who, being a creature