Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/171

Rh, will please those by whom I expect to be preserved, or higher exalted: nothing then remains, but to compute and balance my gain and my loss, and sum up the whole. I suppose that I shall keep my employment ten years, not to mention the fair chance of a better. This at 1500l. a year amounts in ten years to 15000. My estate by the success of the said project sinks 400l. a year; which, at twenty years purchase, is but 8000l. so that I am a clear gainer of 7000l. upon the balance. And during all that period I am possessed of power and credit, can gratify my favourites, and take vengeance on my enemies. And if the project miscarry, my private merit is still entire. This arithmetick, as horrible as it appears, I knowingly affirm to have been practised and applied, in conjunctures whereon depended the ruin or safety of a nation: although probably the charity and virtue of a senate will hardly be induced to believe, that there can be such monsters among mankind. And yet the wise lord Bacon mentions a sort of people (I doubt the race is not yet extinct) who would set a house on fire for the convenience of roasting their own eggs at the flame.

But whoever is old enough to remember, and has turned his thoughts to observe the course of publick affairs in this kingdom from the time of the revolution, must acknowledge, that the highest points of interest and liberty have been often sacrificed to the avarice and ambition of particular persons, upon the very principles and arithmetick that I have supposed: the only wonder is, how these artists were able to prevail upon numbers, and influence even publick. IX.