that will,
I am sure, induce them to place a great confidence in the benefit
arising from Christians, who damn themselves every hour of the day. For
while they speak of the vainness and fickleness of oaths, as an
objection against our project, they little consider that this fickleness
and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this
sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being an objection
against the project, is a concluding argument of the constancy and
solidity of their sure gain by it; a never-failing argument, as he tells
us, among the brethren of his cloth.

The ambitious citizens, who from being plunged deep in the wealthy
whirlpool of the South-Sea, are in hopes of rising to such seats of
fortune and dignity, as would best suit with their mounting and aspiring
hopes, may imagine that this new fund, in the sister nation, may prove a
rival to theirs; and, by drawing off a multitude of subscribers, will,
if it makes a flood in Ireland, cause an ebb in England. But it may be
answered, that, though our author avers, that this fund will vie with
the South-Sea, yet it will not clash with it. On the contrary, the
subscribers to this must wish the increase of the South-Sea, (so far
from being its rival); because the multitude of people raised by it, who
were plain-speakers, as they were plain-dealers before, must learn to
swear, in order to become their clothes, and to be gentlemen _a la
mode_; while those that are ruined, I mean Job'd by it, will dismiss the
patience of their old pattern, swear at their condition, and curse their
Maker in their distress; and so the increase of that English fund will
be demonstratively an ample augmentation of the Irish one: So far will
it be from being rivalled by it, so that each of them may subscribe to a
fund they have their own security for augmenting.

The scrupulous statesmen (for we know that statesmen are usually very
scrupulous) may object against having this project secured by votes in
Parliament; by reason, as they may deem it, in their great wisdom, an
impious project; and that therefore so illustrious an assembly, as the
Irish parliament, ought, by no means, according to the opinion of a
Christian statesman, to be concerned in supporting an impious thing in
the world. The way that some may take to prove it impious, is, because
it will tend highly to the interest of swearing.--But this I take to be
plain downright sophistry, and playing upon wor