“It is no doubt a very generous principle in any person to rejoice in the felicities of a nation, where themselves are strangers or sojourners:  But if it be found that the same persons on all other occasions express a hatred and contempt of the nation and people in general, and hold it for a maxim—­’That the more such a country is humbled, the more their own will rise’; it need be no longer a secret, why such an opinion, and the advantages of it are encouraged.  And besides, if the bayliff reports to his master, that the ox is fat and strong, when in reality it can hardly carry its own legs, is it not natural to think, that command will be given, for a greater load to be put upon it?” [T.  S.]

[21] This was a project for the establishment of a national bank for Ireland.  Swift ridiculed the proposal (see p. 31), no doubt, out of suspicion of the acts of stock-jobbers and the monied interests which were enlisted on the side of the Whigs.  His experience, also, of the abortive South Sea Schemes would tend to make his opposition all the stronger.  But the plans for the bank were not ill-conceived, and had Swift been in calmer temper he might have seen the advantages which attached to the proposals. [T.  S.]

[22] Thus in original edition.  In Faulkner and the “Miscellanies” of 1735 the words are, “altogether imaginary.” [T.  S.]

[23] The motto round a crown piece, which was the usual price of permits. [Orig. edit.]

[24] The Dean of St. Patrick’s. [F.]

[25] Paul Lorrain, who was appointed ordinary of Newgate in 1698, compiled numerous confessions and dying speeches of prisoners condemned to be hanged.  A letter to Swift, from Pope and Bolingbroke, dated December, 1725, mentions him as “the great historiographer,” and Steele, in the “Tatler” and “Spectator,” refers to “Lorrain’s Saints.”  Lorrain attended some famous criminals to the scaffold, including Captain Kidd and Jack Sheppard. [T.  S.]

[26] The following is an account of the proceedings of both the houses of the Irish parliament upon the subject of this proposed bank.

In the year 1720, James, Earl of Abercorn, Gustavus, Viscount Boyne, Sir Ralph Gore, Bart., Oliver St. George, and Michael Ward, Esqs., in behalf of themselves and others, presented a petition to his Majesty for a charter of incorporation, whereby they might be established as a bank, under the name and title of the Bank of Ireland.  They proposed to raise a fund of L500,000 to supply merchants, etc., with money at five per cent., and agreed to contribute L50,000 to the service of government in consideration of their obtaining a charter.  In their petition they state, that “the raising of a million for that purpose is creating a greater fund than the nation can employ.”  Soon after the above-mentioned petition was lodged, a second application was made by Lord Forbes and others, who proposed raising a million for that purpose, and offered to discharge