The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume IX | Page 2

So accurate was his judgment that we stand amazed at his knowledge, and our amazement often turns to a species of horror as we see the cuticle flapped open revealing the crude arrangement beneath. Nor is it to argue too nicely, to suggest that our present sympathy for the past pain, our amazement, and our horror, are, after all, our own unconscious tributes to the power of the man who calls them up, and our confession of the lasting validity of his criticism.
This is not the power nor is it the kind of criticism that are the elements of the art of the journalist. Perhaps we should be glad that it is not; which is but to say that we are content with things as they exist. It requires a special set of conditions to precipitate a Swift. Happily, if we will have it so, the conditions in which we find ourselves ask for that kind of journalist whose function is amply fulfilled when he has measured the movements of the hour by the somewhat higher standards of the day. The conditions under which Swift lived demanded a journalist of an entirely different calibre; and they got him. They obtained a man who dissolved the petty jealousies of party power in the acid of satire, and who distilled the affected fears for Church and State in the alembic of a statesmanship that establishes a nation's majesty and dignity on the common welfare of its free people. When Swift, at the beginning of the November of 1710, was called in to assist the Tory party by undertaking the work of "The Examiner," he found a condition of things so involved and so unstable, that it required the very nicest appreciation, the most delicate handling, and the boldest of hearts to readjust and re-establish, without fearful consequences. Harley and St. John were safely housed, and, apparently, amply protected by a substantial majority. But majorities are often not the most trustworthy of supports. Apart from the over-confidence which they inspire, and apart from the danger of a too-enthusiastic following, such as found expression in the October Club, there was the danger which might come from the dissatisfaction of the people at large, should their temper be wrongly gauged; and at this juncture it was not easy to gauge. The popularity of Marlborough and his victories, on the one hand, was undoubted. On the other, however, there was the growing opinion that those victories had been paid for at a price greater than England could afford. If she had gained reputation and prestige, these could not fill the mouths of the landed class, gradually growing poorer, and the members of this class were not of a disposition to restrain their feelings as they noted the growing prosperity of the Whig stock-jobbers--a prosperity that was due to the very war which was beggaring them. If the landed man cried for peace, he was answered by the Whig stock-jobber that peace meant the ultimate repudiation of the National Debt, with the certainty of the reign of the Pretender. If the landed man spoke for the Church, the Whig speculator raised the shout of "No Popery!" The war had transformed parties into factions, and the ministry stood between a Scylla of a peace-at-any-price, on the one side, and a Charybdis of a war-at-any-price on the other; or, if not a war, then a peace so one-sided that it would be almost impossible to bring it about.
In such troubled waters, and at such a critical juncture, it was given to Swift to act as pilot to the ship of State. His papers to "The Examiner" must bear witness to the skill with which he accomplished the task set before him. His appeal to the people of England for confidence in the ministry, should be an appeal not alone on behalf of its distinguished and able members, but also on behalf of a policy by which "the crooked should be made straight and the rough places plain." Such was to be the nature of his appeal, and he made it in a series of essays that turned every advantage with admirable effect to the side of his clients. Not another man then living could have done what he did; and we question if either Harley or St. John ever realized the service he rendered them. The later careers of these two men furnish no doubtful hints of what might have happened at this period had Swift been other than the man he was.
But Swift's "Examiners" did much more than preserve Harley's head on his shoulders; they brought the nation to a calmer sense of its position, and tutored it to a juster appreciation of the men who were using it for selfish ends. Let us make every allowance for