Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/362

352 bear." For I will not deny to your grace, that I cannot reflect on the singular condition of this country, different from all others upon the face of the earth, without some emotion; and without often examining, as I pass the streets, whether those animals which come in my way, with two legs and human faces, clad and erect, be of the same species, with what I have seen very like them in England as to the outward shape, but differing in their notions, natures, and intellectuals, more than any two kinds of brutes in a forest; which any man of common prudence would immediately discover, by persuading them to define what they mean by law, liberty, property, courage, reason, loyalty, or religion.

One thing, my lord, I am very confident of; that if God Almighty, for our sins, would most justly send us a pestilence, whoever should dare to discover his grief in publick for such a visitation, would certainly be censured for disaffection to the government: for I solemnly profess, that I do not know one calamity we have undergone these many years, which any man, whose opinions were not in fashion, dared to lament, without being openly charged with that imputation. And this is the harder, because although a mother, when she has corrected her child, may sometimes force it to kiss the rod, yet she will never give that power to the footboy or the scullion.

My lord, there are two things for the people of this kingdom to consider: first, their present evil condition; and, secondly, what can be done in some degree to remedy it.

I shall not enter into a particular description of our present misery: it has been already done in several papers, and very fully in one entitled, "A " short