The Works Of Jonathan Swift Vol 13 Classic Reprint

Excerpt from The Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. 13Swift has himself, in the pamphlets printed in the present volume, given a fairly accurate and no exaggerated account of the miserable condition of his country at this time and his writings are amply corroborated by other men who might be considered less passionate and more temperate.The people had become degraded through the evil influ ence of a contemptuous and spendthrift landlord class, who considered the tenant in no other light than as a rent-paying creature. As Roman Catholics they found themselves the social inferiors of the ruling Protestant class - the laws had placed them in that invidious position. They were practic ally without any defence. They were ignorant, poor, and half-starved. Thriftless, like their landlords, they ate up in the autumn what harvests they gathered, and begged for their winter's support. Adultery and incest were common and bred a body of lawless creatures, who herded together like wild beasts and became dangerous pests.Swift knew all this. He had time, between the years 1 7 14 and 1 720, to find it out, even if he had not known of it before. But the condition was getting worse, and his heart filled, as he told Pope in 1728, with a perfect rage and resentment at the mortifying sight of slavery, folly, and baseness about me, among which I am forced to live.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.