Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/430

420 former course of life, will find them to have been servants in good families, broken tradesmen, labourers, cottagers, and what they call decayed housekeepers; but (to use their own cant) reduced by losses and crosses, by which nothing can be understood but idleness and vice.

As this is the only christian country where people, contrary to the old maxim, are the poverty, and not the riches of the nation; so the blessing of increase and multiply is by us converted into a curse: and, as marriage has been ever countenanced in all free countries, so we should be less miserable if it were discouraged in ours, as far as can be consistent with Christianity. It is seldom known in England, that the labourer, the lower mechanick, the servant, or the cottager, thinks of marrying, until he has saved up a stock of money sufficient to carry on his business; nor takes a wife without a suitable portion: and as seldom fails of making a yearly addition to that stock, with a view of providing for his children. But in this kingdom the case is direcdy contrary; where many thousand couples are yearly married, whose whole united fortunes, bating the rags on their backs, would not be sufficient to purchase a pint of buttermilk for their wedding supper, nor have any prospect of supporting their honourable state, but by service, or labour, or thievery. Nay, their happiness is often deferred until they find credit to borrow, or cunning to steal a shilling to pay their popish priest, or infamous couple-beggar. Surely no miraculous portion of wisdom would be required to find some kind of remedy against this destructive evil, or at least not to draw the consequences of it upon our decaying city, Rh