Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/187

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THE

RIGHT OF PRECEDENCE

BETWEEN

PHYSICIANS AND CIVILIANS.







I HAVE waited hitherto with no little impatience, to see some good effect of that debate, which I thought was happily started at a late meeting of our university[1], upon the subject of precedence between professors of law and physick. And, though I cannot join in opinion with the worthy gentleman who first moved in it, I must needs say, the motion was seasonable, and well became him: for, beside that he intended an honour to a faculty he was promoted above[2], and was so self-denying as to wave all debates of that nature as long as he was a party concerned in the motion, he did what in him lay to put an end, by authority, to a point in controversy, which had long divided the gentlemen of those two faculties; and I am very much mistaken if the same

  1. Trinity College, Dublin.
  2. Some eminent civilian, probably, who had recently received preferment.
1
person