Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/251

liament; perhaps I may not slacken even my personal opposition to the wicked measures of the administration, but really I find my health begins to require some attention, and I labour under a distemper which the long sittings in parliament by no means agree with. When Mr. Faulkner delivered me your former letter (for I have since had one sent me hither by Mr. Pope) I was just got up from my bed, where I had lain the whole night in most excessive torture, with a violent fit of the gravel. I was not able to write you any answer by him, who was to depart in two days, and ever since I have been at this place drinking the waters, in hopes they may be of service to me. Beside this of my ill state of health, I am convinced that our constitution is already gone, and we are idly struggling to maintain, what in truth has been long lost, like some old fools here, with gout and palsies at fourscore years old, drinking the waters in hopes of health again. If this was not our case, and that the people are already in effect slaves, would it have been possible for the same minister, who had projected the excise scheme (before the heats it had occasioned in the nation were well laid) to have chosen a new parliament again exactly to his mind? and though perhaps not altogether so strong in numbers, yet as well disposed in general to his purposes as he could wish. His master, I doubt, is not so well beloved as I could wish he was; the minister, I am sure, is as much hated and detested as ever man was, and yet, I say, a new parliament was chosen of the stamp that was desired, just after having failed in the most odious scheme that ever was projected. After this, what hopes can there ever possibly be of success? Unless it be from confusion, which God

forbid