morality was lax,—that other gentlemen besides himself took the road in his day,—that public society was in a strange disordered condition, and the State was ravaged by other condottieri. The Boyne was being fought and won, and lost—the bells rung in William's victory, in the very same tone with which they would have pealed for James's. Men were loose upon politics, and to shift for themselves. They, as well as old
or knowledge have an invincible modesty and suspicion of themselves upon their first sending their thoughts into the world."
This "invincible modesty" was no doubt the sole reason which induced the Dean to keep the secret of the "Drapier's Letters," and a hundred humble Christian works of which he was the author. As for the Opposition, the Doctor was for dealing severely with them: he writes to Stella:—
Journal. Letter XIX.
". . . . . . We have let Guiscard be buried at last, after showing him pickled in a trough this fortnight for twopence a piece; and the fellow that showed would point to his body and say, 'See, gentlemen, this is the wound that was given him by his Grace the Duke of Ormond;' and, 'This is the wound, &c.; and then the show was over, and another set of rabble came in. 'Tis hard that our laws would not suffer us to hang his body in chains, because he was not tried; and in the eye of the law every man is innocent till then." ******
Journal. Letter XXVII.
"I was this afternoon with Mr. Secretary at his office, and helped to hinder a man of his pardon, who is condemned for a rape. The Under Secretary was willing to save hin; but I told the Secretary he could not pardon him without a favourable report from the Judge; besides, he was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue, and deserved hanging for something else, and so le shall swing."
