Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/229

ber of fourscore, with their wives and families, will inevitably starve, having been bound to no other calling.

"Your petitioners desire your honours will tenderly consider the premises, and suffer your said petitioners to continue their trade (those who set them at work being still willing to employ them, though at lower rates;) and your said petitioners will give security to make use of the same stuff, and dress in the same manner, as they always did, and no other. "And your petitioners, &c."

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In the Spectator, No. 575, August 2, 1714, the following article was proposed by Dr. Swift:

"The following question is started by one of the schoolmen: Supposing the whole body of the earth were a great ball or mass of the finest sand, and that a single grain or particle of this sand should be annihilated every thousand years. Supposing then that you had it in your choice to be happy all the while this prodigious mass of sand was consuming by this slow method, until there was not a grain of it left, on condition you were to be miserable for ever after; or supposing that you might be happy for ever after, on condition you would be miserable until the whole mass of sand were thus annihilated at the rate of one sand in a thousand years: which of these two cases would you make your choice?"