rates Burke's remark.

The city of Dublin, at the time Swift wrote, was on a par with some
of the lower districts of New York City about twenty years ago,
which were dangerous in the extreme to traverse after dark. Robbers
in gangs would waylay pedestrians and leave them often badly
maltreated and maimed. These thieves and "roughs" became so
impudent and brazen in their business that the condition of the
city was a disgrace to the municipal government. To put down the
nuisance Swift took a characteristic method. Ebenezer Elliston had,
about this time, been executed for street robbery. Although given a
good education by his parents, he forsook his trade of a silk
weaver, and became a gambler and burglar. He was well known to the
other gangs which infested Dublin, but his death did not act as a
deterrent. Swift, in composing Elliston's pretended dying speech,
gave it the flavour and character of authenticity in order to
impose on the members of other gangs, and so successful was he in
his intention, that the speech was accepted as the real expression
of their late companion by the rest and had a most salutary effect.
Scott says it was "received as genuine by the banditti who had been
companions of his depredations, who were the more easily persuaded
of its authenticity as it contained none of the cant usual in the
dying speeches composed for malefactors by the Ordinary or the
ballad-makers. The threat which it held out of a list deposited
with a secure hand, containing their names, crimes, and place of
rendezvous, operated for a long time in preventing a repetition of
their villanies, which had previously been so common."

* * * * *

The text of the present edition is based on that given by Faulkner
in the fourth volume of his edition of Swift printed in Dublin in
1735.

[T. S.]

THE LAST SPEECH AND DYING WORDS OF EBENEZER ELLISTON.

I am now going to suffer the just punishment for my crimes prescribed by
the law of God and my country. I know it is the constant custom, that
those who come to this place should have speeches made for them, and
cried about in their own hearing, as they are carried to execution; and
truly they are such speeches that although our fraternity be an ignorant
illiterate people, they would make a man ashamed to