Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/175

Rh showing their zeal to discover, prosecute, and condemn me, for endeavouring to do my duty in serving my country: and yet I am conscious to myself, that I never had the least intention to reflect on his majesty's ministers, nor on any other person, except William Wood, whom I neither did, nor do yet conceive to be of that number. However, some would have it, that I went too far; but I suppose they will now allow themselves mistaken. I am sure I might easily have gone farther, and I think I could not easily have fared worse. And therefore I was no farther affected with their proclamation, and subsequent proceedings, than a good clergyman is, with the sins of the people. And as to the poor printer, he is now gone to appear before a higher, and before a righteous tribunal.

As my intention is only to lay before your great assemblies the general wishes of the nation; and as I have already declared it our principal wish, that your first proceeding would be to examine into the pernicious fraud of William Wood; so I must add, as the universal opinion, that all schemes of commutation, composition, and the like expedients, either avowed or implied, will be of the most pernicious consequences to the publick; against the dignity of a free kingdom; and prove an encouragement to future adventurers, in the same destructive projects. For it is a maxim, which no man at present disputes, that even a connivance to admit one thousand pounds in these halfpence, will produce, in time, the same ruinous effects, as if we openly consented to admit a million. It were therefore infinitely more safe and eligible to leave things in the doubtful, melancholy state they are at present (which however Rh