them, by reducing things (as Michiaevel speaks) to their first principles; never letting abuses grow inveterate, or multiply so far, that it will be hard to find remedies, and perhaps impossible to apply them.  As he that would keep his house in repair, must attend every little breach or flaw, and supply it immediately; else time alone will bring all to ruin; how much more the common accidents of storms and rain?  He must live in perpetual danger of his house falling about his ears; and will find it cheaper to throw it quite down, and build it again from the ground, perhaps upon a new foundation, or at least in a new form, which may neither be so safe, nor so convenient, as the old.

***** ***** ***** *****

THE SENTIMENTS

OF A

CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAN,

WITH RESPECT TO

RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT.

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1708.

NOTE.

The writing of this tract, as has been already observed, placed Swift in a position where allegiance to party was not easy to maintain.  It amounted to a warning to Whigs as well as Tories.  To the former he urged that the Church of England was wide enough for the highest principles of civil liberty; to the latter he tried to show that to be a religious and God-fearing man it was not absolutely necessary to be a Tory in politics.  “Whoever has examined the conduct and proceedings of both parties for some years past, whether in or out of power, cannot well conceive it possible to go far towards the extremes of either, without offering some violence to his integrity or understanding.”  It is true that Whiggism and “fanatical genius” were almost synonymous terms for Swift; but that was because the Church was of prime consideration with him, and the Whigs numbered in their ranks the great army of Dissent.  Swift, in his famous letter to Pope, dated Dublin, January 10th, 1720-21, reviews his political opinions of 1708 to justify himself against the misrepresentations of “the virulence of libellers:  whose malice has taken the same train in both, by fathering dangerous principles in government upon me, which I never maintained, and insipid productions, which I am not capable of writing.”  That review is but a summary of what is given fully in this tract.  No appeal was ever better intentioned.  “I only wish,” he says to Pope, “my endeavours had succeeded better in the great point I had at heart, which was that of reconciling the ministers to each other.”  But High Church and Low Church were cries which had divided politicians as if they did not belong to one nation.  To Swift it was easy enough to be a staunch Churchman and at the same time expose the fallacies underlying the faith in the sovereign power; but then Swift was here no party fanatic who would use the