dainty, and is four times dearer than other rare and delicious meat.  We buy it of the executioner, for the bodies of all public capital offenders are his fees.  As soon as the criminal is dead, he cuts the body in pieces, squeezes out the blood, and makes his house a shambles for the flesh of men and women, where all people that can afford it come and buy.  I remember, about ten years ago, a tall, well-complexioned, pretty fat virgin, about nineteen years of age, and tire-woman to the queen, was found guilty of high treason, for designing to poison the king; and accordingly she was condemned to suffer the most cruel death that could be invented, and her sentence was, to be nailed to a cross, and kept alive as long as possible.  The sentence was put in execution; when she fainted with the cruel torment, the hangman gave her strong liquors, &c. to revive her; the sixth day she died.  Her long sufferings, youth, and good constitution, made her flesh so tender, delicious, and valuable, that the executioner sold it for above eight tallies; for there was such thronging to this inhuman market, that men of great fashion thought themselves fortunate if they could purchase a pound or two of it.”  Lond. 1705, p. 112. [S.]

[133] The English government had been making concessions to the Dissenters, and, of course, Swift satirically alludes here to the arguments used by the government in the steps they had taken.  But the truth of the matter, Swift hints, was, that those who desired to abolish the test were more anxious for their pockets than their consciences. [T.  S.]

[134] The inhabitants of a district of Brazil supposed to be savages, making the name synonymous with savage ignorance. [T.  S.]

[135]

  “Remove me from this land of slaves,
  Where all are fools, and all are knaves,
  Where every fool and knave is bought,
  Yet kindly sells himself for nought.”

(From Swift’s note-book, written while detained at Holyhead in September, 1727.) [T.  S.]

[136] All these are proposals advocated, of course, by Swift himself, in previous pamphlets and papers. [T.  S.]

[137] So that there would be no danger of an objection from England that the English were suffering from Irish competition. [T.  S.]

[138] This was the celebrated periodical founded by Pulteney, after he had separated himself from Walpole, to which Bolingbroke contributed his famous letters of an Occasional Writer.  The journal carried on a political war against Walpole’s administration, and endeavoured to bring about the establishment of a new party, to consist of Tories and the Whigs who could not agree with Walpole’s methods.  Caleb D’Anvers was a mere name for a Grub Street hack who was supposed to be the writer.  But Walpole had no difficulty in recognizing the hand of Bolingbroke, and his reply to the first number of the Occasional Writer made Bolingbroke wince. [T.  S.]

[139] The “Modest Proposal.”  See page 207. [T.  S.]