Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/162

152 for all times and circumstances, any writer, with a very small measure of discretion, might easily be safe; but I doubt, in practice, it has been frequently controlled, at least before his time: for I take it to be an old rule in law.

I have read, or heard, a passage of seignior Gregorio Leti an Italian; who, being in London, busying himself with writing the history of England, told king Charles the Second, that he endeavoured as much as he could to avoid giving offence, but found it a thing impossible, although he should have been as wise as Solomon. The king answered, that if this were the case, he had better employ his time in writing proverbs, as Solomon did: but Leti lay under no publick necessity of writing; neither would England have been one halfpenny the better or the worse, whether he writ or not.

This I mention, because I know it will readily be objected, what have private men to do with the publick? what call had a drapier to turn politician, to meddle in matters of state? would not his time have been better employed in looking to his shop; or his pen, in writing proverbs, elegies, ballads, garlands, and wonders? he would then have been out of all danger of proclamations and prosecutions. Have we not able magistrates and counsellors hourly watching over the publick weal? All this may be true: and yet, when the addresses from both houses of parliament against Mr. Wood's halfpence failed of success, if some pen had not been employed to inform the people how far they might legally proceed in refusing that coin, to detect the fraud, the artifice, and insolence of the coiner, and to lay open the most ruinous consequences to the whole kingdom, which would evitably