THIS is interesting as the first of Swift's political tracts; and at the time when it was written (1701), his connexion with the Whig party was unbroken. In the House of Commons the opposition to William's Whig Ministry was factious and irreconcileable. Four Ministers were the chief objects of the attack in the Commons — Lord Somers (the Lord Chancellor), the Earl of Orford, Lord Halifax, and the Earl of Portland. The relations between the two Houses were strained to the utmost: and, failing in all other devices for attaining the'ir end, which was to attack William through his Ministers, the Commons resorted to the unconstitutional method of coercing the Lords, by 1 tacking' their resolutions to money Bills, which could not be altered by the Lords. In this position of affairs, Swift entered upon the arena of political controversy, in order to point out the danger involved in the action of the Commons; and he paralleled the circumstances by examples drawn from the histories of Athens and Rome, choosing the names of Miltiades, Themistocles, Pericles, and Alcibiades in Athens, and the most critical phases of faction in Rome, to illustrate the present case. The earlier part of this pamphlet is of little interest; but the conclusion (which is given here) shows much of Swift's later force, and many of his peculiarities of style.
The pamphlet was anonymous; but its authorship soon became known, and the knowledge secured for Swift some attention from the leading Whigs during the few years that yet intervened before his abandonment of that party.
The earlier part of this pamphlet, in which Swift traces certain supposed parallels between episodes of Athenian or Roman history, and the phases of the current political struggle, is of small interest, and shows but little of his usual power. But, in the conclusion of the pamphlet, from which the following pages are taken, Swift's argument becomes more telling, and his style more characteristic and more forcible.