Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/228

218 As to my naming a person dead, the plain honest reason is the best. He was armed with power and will to do mischief, even where he was not provoked; as appeared by his prosecuting two printers, one to death, and both to ruin, who had neither offended God, nor the king, nor him, nor the publick.

What an encouragement to vice is this? If an ill man be alive, and in power, we dare not attack him; and if he be weary of the world, or of his own villanies, he has nothing to do but die, and then his reputation is safe. For, these excellent casuists know just Latin enough to have heard a most foolish precept, that de mortuis nil nisi bonum; so that if Socrates, and Anytus his accuser, had happened to die together, the charity of survivors, must either have obliged them to hold their peace, or to fix the same character on both. The only crime of charging the dead is, when the least doubt remains whether the accusation be true; but when men are openly abandoned, and lost to all shame, they have no reason to think it hard, if their memory be reproached. Whoever reports, or otherwise publishes, any thing which it is possible may be false, that man is a slanderer; hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto. Even the least misrepresentation, or aggravation of facts, deserves the same censure in some degree: but in this case I am quite deceived, if my errour has not been on the side of extenuation.

I have now present before me the idea of some persons (I know not in what part of the world) who spend every moment of their lives, and every turn of