WHIG Account.

To persons promoted to bishoprics, or removed
to more beneficial ones, computed
per ann. 10050 0 0
To civil employments, 9030 0 0
To military commands, 8436 0 0
-----------
27516 0 0

TORY Account.

To Tories                                         111 0 0
-----------
Balance                                         27405 0 0
-----------

I shall conclude with this observation.  That, as I think, the Tories have sufficient reason to be fully satisfied with the share of trust, and power, and employments which they possess under the lenity of the present Government; so, I do not find how his Excellency can be justly censured for favouring none but High-Church, high-fliers, termagants, Laudists, Sacheverellians, tip-top-gallant-men, Jacobites, tantivies, anti-Hanoverians, friends to Popery and the Pretender, and to arbitrary power, disobligers of England, breakers of DEPENDENCY, inflamers of quarrels between the two nations, public incendiaries, enemies to the King and Kingdoms, haters of TRUE Protestants, laurelmen, Annists, complainers of the Nation’s poverty, Ormondians, iconoclasts, anti-Glorious-memorists, white-rosalists, tenth-a-Junians, and the like:  when by a fair state of the account, the balance, I conceive, plainly lies on the other side.[170]

A PROPOSAL

FOR

AN ACT OF PARLIAMENT, TO PAY OFF THE DEBT OF THE NATION,

WITHOUT TAXING THE SUBJECT.

BY WHICH THE NUMBER OF LANDED GENTRY AND SUBSTANTIAL FARMERS WILL BE CONSIDERABLY INCREASED, AND NO ONE PERSON WILL BE THE POORER, OR CONTRIBUTE ONE FARTHING TO THE CHARGE.

     NOTE.

In volume three of the present edition two tracts are given relating to attempts made by the bishops of Ireland for enlarging their powers.  These tracts are entitled:  “On the Bill for the Clergy’s residing on their Livings,” and “Considerations upon two Bills, sent down from the House of Lords and the House of Commons in Ireland relating to the Clergy of Ireland” (pp. 249-272).  The bills which Swift argued against were evidently intended to give the bishops further powers and increased opportunities for making money. (The matter is gone into at length in the notes prefixed to the above reprints.) The bishops sought rights which would enable them to obtain large powers in letting leases, and their eagerness to get such powers, coupled with the efforts they expended, showed that they had less regard for the Church’s interest than for their own.

In the present tract Swift, with his usual assumption of grave consideration of an important question, but in reality with cutting irony, proposes to dispose of all the Church lands for a lump sum, give the bishops their full just share,