o the contrary, which I should be sorry to receive, I could
hardly forbear publishing some paper in opposition to it, or leaving one
behind me, if there should be occasion." In August of the same year the
agitation for the repeal was renewed, and in December Swift published
his "Letter on the Sacramental Test," writing as if from Dublin and as a
member of the Irish House of Commons. When he writes to King in the
following month he makes a mild attempt to convince the Archbishop that
the pamphlet was not of his authorship. "The author has gone out of his
way to reflect on me as a person likely to write for repealing the test,
which I am sure is very unfair treatment. This is all I am likely to get
by the company I keep. I am used like a sober man with a drunken face,
have the scandal of the vice without the satisfaction." But King was not
deceived. In his reply to Swift he simply remarks: "You need not be
concerned: I will engage you will lose nothing by that paper." Swift,
however, lost more than the Archbishop thought; for "that paper" led to
his severance from the Whigs, and, in after life, to much contumely cast
on his character for being a political renegade. Because "he was not
Whig enough;" because he would not forsake his Church for his party,
critics and biographers have thought fit to make little of him, and to
compare him to his discredit with contemporaries whose intellects he
held in the palm of his hand, and to whom he might have stood as a moral
exemplar.

Swift refers to this tract in his "Memoirs relating to the change in the
Queen's Ministry," as follows:--"It was everybody's opinion, that the
Earl of Wharton would endeavour, when he went to Ireland, to take off
the test, as a step to have it taken off here: upon which I drew up and
printed a pamphlet, by way of a letter from a member of parliament here,
shewing the danger to the Church by such an intent. Although I took all
care to be private, yet the Lieutenant's chaplain, and some others
guessed me to be the author, and told his Excellency their suspicions;
whereupon I saw him no more until I went to Ireland."

The tract is one of the most favourable specimens of Swift's
controversial method and trenchant satire. The style is
excellent--forcible and pithy; while the arguments are like most of
Swift's arguments, aptly to the point with yet a potentiality of
application which fits them for the most general statement of the
principles under discussion.