Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/422

412 pitch of assurance; and although it may be justly apprehended, that they will do so in time, if these counterfeits shall happen to succeed in their evil designs of passing for real footmen, thereby to render themselves more amiable to the ladies.

Your petitioners do farther allege, that many of the said counterfeits, upon a strict examination, have been found in the act of strutting, staring, swearing, swaggering in a manner that plainly showed their best endeavours to imitate us. Wherein, although they did not succeed, yet by their ignorant and ungainly way of copying our graces, the utmost indignity was endeavoured to be cast upon our whole profession.

Your petitioners do therefore make it their humble request, that this honourable house (to many of whom your petitioners are nearly allied) will please to take this grievance into your most serious consideration: humbly submitting, whether it would not be proper, that certain officers might, at the publick charge, be employed to search for, and discover all such counterfeit footmen; to carry them before the next justice of peace, by whose warrant, upon the first conviction, they shall be stripped of their coats and oaken ornaments, and be set two hours in the stocks; upon the second conviction, beside stripping, be set six hours in the stocks with a paper pinned on their breasts signifying their crime in large capital letters, and in the following words: "A. B. commonly called A. B. esq., a toupee, and a notorious impostor, who presumed to personate a true Irish footman."

And for any other offence, the said toupee shall be committed to Bridewell, whipped three times, forced to hard labour for a month, and not to be set at