Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/262

252 ; no more of either, than what a poor hungry servitor can be expected to bring with him from his college. It would be tedious to show the reverse of all this, in our distant poorer parishes through most parts of Ireland, wherein every reader may make the comparison.

Lastly, the honourable house of commons may consider, whether the scheme of multiplying beggarly clergymen throuigh the whole kingdom, who must all have votes for choosing parliament men (provided they can prove their freeholds to be worth 40s. per annum, ultra reprisas) may not, by their numbers, have great influence upon elections; being entirely under the dependence of their bishops. For, by a moderate computation, after all the divisions and subdivisions of parishes, that my lords the bishops have power to make by their new laws, there will, as soon as the present set of clergy goes off, be raised an army of ecclesiastical militants, able enough for any kind of service except that of the altar.

I am indeed in some concern about a fund for building a thousand or two churches, wherein these probationers may read their wall lectures; and begin to doubt they must be contented with barns; which barns, will be one great advancing step, toward an accommodation with our true protestant brethren, the dissenters.

The scheme of encouraging clergymen to build houses, by dividing a living of 500l. a year into ten parts, is a contrivance, the meaning whereof has got on the wrong side of my comprehension; unless it may be argued, that bishops build no houses because they are so rich: and therefore the inferiour clergy will