said he, "to do justice to my station, and give no offence,"
But it was in his Irish policy that Swift proved most clearly the pure and lofty idealism that burned within him. In defending the Irish from oppression he was not swayed by the motives of patriotism; he did not yield even to a personal prejudice. He was not an Irishman. No drop of Irish blood flowed in his veins. As he said himself, he was born in Ireland by a mere accident, and he bitterly resented the superstition that the children of a man, living in Ireland, are all Irish, "while a thief transported to Jamaica, and married to a battered Drury Lane hackney jade, should produce true Britons." Nor did he love Ireland. He knew himself condemned to die there as he said "like a poisoned rat in a hole," and gladly would he have found an excuse to live out his life among his friends in England. But he hated injustice and dishonour, wherever he saw them, and so he became as wise and valiant a champion of Ireland as that unhappy country ever found.
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