Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/215

Rh ; the shops full of goods wrought to perfection, and filled with customers; the comfortable diet, and dress, and dwellings of the people; the vast number of ships in our harbours and docks, and shipwrights in our seaport towns; the roads crowded with carriers, laden with rich manufactures; the perpetual concourse to and fro of pompous equipages.

With what envy and admiration would those gentlemen return from so delightful a progress? what glorious reports would they make, when they went back to England?

But my heart is too heavy to continue this irony longer: for it is manifest, that whatever stranger took such a journey, would be apt to think himself travelling in Lapland or Ysland, rather than in a country so favoured by nature as ours, both in fruitfulness of soil and temperature of climate. The miserable dress, and diet, and dwelling of the people; the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom; the old seats of the nobility and gentry all in ruins, and no new ones in their stead; the families of farmers, who pay great rents, living in filth and nastiness upon buttermilk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hogsty to receive them. These indeed may be comfortable sights to an English spectator; who comes for a short time, only to learn the language, and returns back to his own country, whither he finds all our wealth transmitted.

There is not one argument used to prove the riches