Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/89

Rh for many ages, an example of any kingdom so firmly united in a point of great importance, as this of ours is at present against that detestable fraud. But however, it so happens, that some weak people begin to be alarmed anew by rumours industriously spread. Wood prescribes to the newsmongers in London what they are to write. In one of their papers, published here by some obscure printer, and certainly with a bad design, we are told, that the papists in Ireland have entered into an association against his coin; although it be notoriously known that they never once offered to stir in the matter; so that the two houses of parliament, the privy council, the great number of corporations, the lord mayor and aldermen of Dublin, the grand juries, and principal gentlemen of several counties, are stigmatised in a lump under the name of papists.

This impostor and his crew do likewise give out, that by refusing to receive his dross for sterling, we dispute the king's prerogative, are grown ripe for rebellion, and ready to shake off the dependency of Ireland upon the crown of England. To countenance which reports, he has published a paragraph in another newspaper, to let us know, that the lord-lieutenant is ordered to come over immediately to settle his halfpence.

I entreat you, my dear countrymen, not to be under the least concern upon these, and the like rumours, which are no more than the last howls of a dog dissected alive, as I hope he has sufficiently been. These calumnies are the only reserve that is left him. For, surely our continued and (almost) unexampled loyalty, will never be called in tion