Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/142

132 presented as libels, he would order the offensive paragraphs to be read before him; and he was often so very happy in applying the initial letters of names, and expounding dubious hints (the two common expedients among writers of that class for escaping the law) that he discovered much more than ever the authors intended; as many of them, or their printers, found to their cost. If such methods are to be followed in examining what I have already written, or may write hereafter, upon the subject of Mr. Wood, I defy any man of fifty times my understanding and caution to avoid being entrapped: unless he will be content to write what none will read, by repeating over the old arguments and computations, whereof the world is already grown weary. So that my good friend Harding lies under this dilemma; either to let my learned works hang for ever drying upon his lines; or venture to publish them at the hazard of being laid by the heels.

I need not tell your lordship where the difficulty lies: it is true, that the king and the laws permit us to refuse this coin of Mr. Wood; but at the same time it is equally true, that the king and the laws permit us to receive it. Now, it is barely possible, that the ministers in England, may not suppose the consequences of uttering that brass among us, to be so ruinous as we apprehend; because perhaps if they understood it in that light, they would in common humanity, use their credit with his majesty for saving a most loyal kingdom from destruction. But, as long as it shall please those great persons to think that coin will not be so very pernicious to us, we lie under the disadvantage of being censured as obstinate in not complying with a royal patent. Therefore nothing