This tract occupies Nos. iii. and iv. of a periodical paper called “The Correspondent,” originally printed at Dublin “by James Hoey in Skinner-Row, 1733.”  The text here given is that of the original “Correspondent”; that given by Scott and Nichols is evidently taken from the London reprint.  It will be seen that the matter as it was originally printed contains much more than was afterwards reprinted.  I have indicated in footnotes where Scott’s omissions occur.  The title of the periodical runs:  “The Correspondent, No. iii. [No. iv.] Humbly inscribed to the Conforming Nobility and Gentry of Ireland.”  Nos. i. and ii. dealt with “Old and New Light Presbyterians”; but these are not by Swift.  In Nichols’s edition this pamphlet appears in the second volume of the “Supplement to Dr. Swift’s Works,” 1779, p. 307.  See note to the previous pamphlet, where the question of the date of the first publication of this tract is discussed.  It may be, as Monck Mason suggests ("History of St. Patrick’s,” p. 389, note h), that a separate and second edition of this “Narrative” was likewise printed, of the same size as “The Presbyterians’ Plea,” and bound up, occasionally with that pamphlet; but such an edition I have never seen.  The only reprint of the time examined, is that by A. Dodd, of Temple Bar, affixed to the second London edition of “The Presbyterians’ Plea of Merit,” and the date of which may be put down to 1734.

[T.S.]

  A NARRATIVE OF THE SEVERAL ATTEMPTS,
  WHICH THE DISSENTERS
  OF IRELAND HAVE MADE, FOR
  A REPEAL OF THE SACRAMENTAL
  TEST.

My intention is in this and some following “Correspondents,” to vindicate the Test Act, from the insolent aspersions which are thrown upon it, and to answer objections, which are raised against it, particularly by an anonymous author, in a paper entitled, “The Nature and Consequence of the Sacramental Test considered,” &c., printed anno 1731, upon the opening of the last session of parliament, and now republished.

As a proper introduction to this, I must take leave to put the conformists in mind, of what (upon recollection) they may very well remember, and which in some measure they have been formerly apprised of, and that is in[1] a narrative of the several attempts, which the Dissenters of Ireland have made, for a repeal of the Sacramental Test.

When the oath of supremacy was repealed which had been the Church’s great security since the second of Queen Elizabeth, against both Papists and Presbyterians, who equally refused it, I presume it is no secret now to tell the reader, that the repeal of that oath opened a sluice and let in such a current of dissenters into some of our corporations, as bore down all before them.

[Footnote 1:  From the beginning of this paragraph to the word “in” is omitted in the editions issued by Scott and Nichols.  The words “A Narrative...  Sacramental Test” are used by Scott as part of the sub-title of the tract; but he adds the date, 1731.  This is a mistake, since “The Correspondent” appeared in 1733; and if it did appear in the second edition of “The Plea,” that edition was published either in the same or in the following year. [T.S.]]