Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/267

Rh or more, he stipulated with the tenant to resign up twenty or thirty acres to the minister of the parish where it lay convenient, without lessening his former rent, and with no great abatement of the fine; and this he did in the parts near Dublin, where land is at the highest rates, leaving a small chiefry for the minister to pay, hardly a sixth part of the value. I doubt not, that almost every bishop in the kingdom may do the same generous act, with less damage to their sees than his late grace of Dublin; much of whose lands were out in fee farms, or leases for lives; and I am sorry that the good example of such a prelate has not been followed.

But a great majority of the clergy's friends cannot hitherto reconcile themselves to this project; which they call a levelling principle, that must inevitably root out the seeds of all honest emulation, the legal parent of the greatest virtue and most generous actions among men; but which, in the general opinion (for I do not pretend to offer my own) will never more have room to exert itself in the breast of any clergyman whom this kingdom shall produce.

But, whether the consequences of these bills may, by the virtues and frailties of future bishops, sent over hither to rule the church, terminate in good or evil, I shall not presume to determine, since God can work the former out of the latter. However, one thing I can venture to assert; that from the earliest ages of Christianity, to the minute I am now writing, there never was a precedent of such a proceeding; much less was it to be feared, hoped, or apprehended, from such hands in any christian country; and so it may pass for more than a phenixphoenix [sic];. IX.