Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/397

Rh salaries, &c. However, there will be the clear yearly sum of one hundred thousand pounds, which may very justly claim a million subscription.

It is determined to lay out the remaining unapplied profits, which will be very considerable, toward the erecting and maintaining of charity schools. A design so beneficial to the publick, and especially to the protestant interest of this kingdom, has met with so much encouragement from several great patriots in England, that they have engaged to procure an act to secure the sole benefit of informing, on this swearing act, to the agents and servants of this new bank. Several of my friends pretend to demonstrate, that this bank will in time vie with the South Sea company: they insist, that the army dispend as many oaths yearly as will produce one hundred thousand pounds nett.

There are computed to be one hundred pretty fellows in this town, that swear fifty oaths a head daily; some of them would think it hard to be stinted to a hundred: this very branch would produce a vast sum yearly.

The of this kingdom will bring in a vast revenue; the oaths of a little Connaught one, as well as they could be numbered by two persons, amounted to three thousand. It is true, that it would be impossible to turn all of them into ready money; for a shilling is so great a duty on swearing, that if it was carefully exacted, the common people might as well pretend to drink wine as to swear; and an oath would be as rare among them as a clean shirt.

A servant, that I employed to accompany the militia their last muster day, had scored down, in the Rh