Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/56

46 of a committee of the council in England is hitherto a law in either kingdom; and until any point if determined to be a law, it remains disputable by every subject.

This (may it please your lordships and worships) may seem a strange way of discoursing in an illiterate shopkeeper. I have endeavoured (although without the help of books) to improve that small portion of reason God has been pleased to give me; and when reason plainly appears before me, I cannot turn away my head from it. Thus for instance, if any lawyer should tell me that such a point were law, from which many gross palpable absurdities must follow; I would not, I could not believe him. If Sir Edward Coke should positively assert (which he no where does, but the direct contrary) that a limited prince, could, by his prerogative, oblige his subjects to take half an ounce of lead, stamped with his image, for twenty shillings in gold, I should swear he was deceived, or a deceiver; because a power like that, would leave the whole lives and fortunes of the people entirely at the mercy of the monarch; yet this in effect is what Wood has advanced in some of his papers; and what suspicious people may possibly apprehend from some passages in that which is called the report.

That paper mentions such persons to have been examined, who were desirous and willing to be heard upon this subject. I am told they were four in all; Coleby, Brown, Mr. Finley the banker, and one more, whose name I know not. The first of these was tried for robbing the treasury in Ireland; and though he was acquitted for want of legal proof,