Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/99

Rh no time to create differences, when the kingdom was in danger.

These, I say, and the like methods, would, in corrupt times, have been taken, to let in this deluge of brass among us. And I am confident, even then, would not have succeeded; much less under the administration of so excellent a person as the lord ; and in a country where the people of all ranks, parties, and denominations, are convinced to a man, that the utter undoing of themselves and their posterity for ever, will be dated from the admission of that execrable coin: that if it once enters, it can be no more confined to a small or moderate quantity, than a plague can be confined to a few families; and that no equivalent can be given by any earthly power, any more than a dead carcase can be recovered to life by a cordial.

There is one comfortable circumstance in this universal opposition to Mr. Wood, that the people sent over hither from England, to fill up our vacancies, ecclesiastical, civil, and military, are all on our side. Money, the great divider of the world, has, by a strange revolution, been the great uniter of a most divided people. Who would leave a hundred pounds a year in England (a country of freedom) to be paid a thousand in Ireland out of Wood's exchequer? The gentleman they have lately made primate, would never quit his seat in an English house of lords, and his preferments at Oxford and Bristol, worth twelve hundred pounds a year, for four times the denomination here, but not half the value; therefore I expect to hear he will be as good an man,